The Hive Queen (Wings of Fire, Book 12)

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Well, there’s a copy of a piece of it on the statue outside the library,” Cricket said. “Let me go and you can go read it yourself.”

  Cadelle suddenly went very still. Outside, Cricket could hear running talonsteps and dragons shouting. Among the clamor of words, she heard one dragon call to another, “It says the queen is lying!” and someone else yell, “I found another one!” Her messages were getting the attention she’d hoped for — but she’d also hoped she’d be hidden away inside the water tower by now.

  Because if the news was spreading through the Hive … Wasp only needed to be inside one listening soldier, and then she’d realize Cricket must be here somewhere … and then she’d —

  Cadelle’s eyes flicked over to white, as though all the color had suddenly been leached out of her eyeballs.

  “Aha,” said the queen of the HiveWings, tipping Cadelle’s head toward Cricket. “There you are.”

  Cricket whirled and bolted up the stairs. Behind her, the queen laughed and laughed, an eerie awful cackle that was like something else trying to crawl out through Cadelle’s normal laugh.

  She made it to the next floor just as three more white-eyed HiveWings burst through the windows, shattering the shutters and ripping down the dark gray curtains. Cricket threw the empty paint pot and paintbrush at them, spattering bright pink droplets everywhere, and hurtled up to the top level, across the guest room and out onto the balcony.

  HiveWings were swarming toward Cadelle’s house. She could see dragons on every street, running or flying in her direction. The queen had watched Cricket slip through her claws at the Temple of Clearsight; she wasn’t going to let her escape again.

  Cricket threw herself off the balcony and flew as hard as she could toward the open ledges that led to the savanna. I escaped the Temple. I can do it again. If I fly and fly …

  But this time she didn’t have Sundew with her, and the sky was too far away, and there were too many HiveWings, and the queen controlled them all.

  They came from everywhere, boiling up from the ground and the windows and the ceilings like an explosion of fire ants. They were tiny dragonets and hulking soldiers and glittering socialites in their jewels and sparkles and finery, but none of them were themselves anymore. They were a swarm; they were the thousand claws of Queen Wasp. They had become mindless weapons.

  Cricket had been terrified of the white-eyed dragons ever since that morning when she was two years old. Now she was the dragon they hunted, the dragon who didn’t move in unison with everyone else. The dragon who couldn’t escape.

  She felt talons slam into her back and throw her to the ground. A red-striped HiveWing shot a blast of acid that just missed her shoulder and hissed into the treestuff beside her head. As she tried to roll away, another drove his wrist stingers into the edge of her wings, pinning her to the ground. Cricket shrieked with pain as Cadelle landed on her chest.

  Her grandmother did not look triumphant or enraged or even interested. Her face was entirely blank while she held down her granddaughter so a black HiveWing with yellow spots could shoot something painful and paralyzing into Cricket’s wings.

  Cricket turned her head away from Cadelle’s empty face and saw SilkWings watching from the windows and the sidewalks.

  Last chance.

  Through the haze of pain, she yelled, “The queen is lying to you! The Book never said she should rule you! It was all a lie!” and she thought she saw something — sympathy? confusion? surprise? — flicker in their faces.

  And then the yellow-spotted HiveWing shoved his stinger into her neck. Her throat closed over the words she still wanted to say. Her vocal cords radiated with agony and her head flopped over, her neck muscles refusing to work for her anymore.

  The HiveWings seized her frozen wings and dragged her away, away from the frightened SilkWing faces and up the ramps, up and up and up to the prison at the center of Lady Jewel’s palace.

  Every time Cricket thought about the library in Jewel Hive and thought, Maybe Lady Jewel isn’t so bad after all, she always made herself remember the prison, which Jewel had insisted on building within her own palace walls instead of somewhere a civilized distance away. No one knew why she wanted her prison so close, or what happened to the dragons that disappeared inside it.

  I guess I’m about to find out, Cricket thought bleakly as they passed through the blue-and-gold-and-beetle-green silk-spangled gates of Jewel’s palace. All the walls inside seemed to be full of windows, so the gray afternoon light and the sound of raindrops and the scent of a storm carried through the entire palace. For a moment, the breeze brushed Cricket’s face, whispering of the freedom outside.

  And then the HiveWings descended a staircase and Cricket’s wings scraped over the black stone threshold that marked the end of Jewel’s public palace and the beginning of the secret prison. She wished she could lift her head to see where she was being taken, but all she could do was watch the scuffed floor pass below her, scarred with long trails of desperate claw marks.

  Down here there were no windows, and the flamesilk lanterns were few and far between, leaving patches of darkness between dim pools of light. Cricket could hear mournful singing coming from one of the cells as they passed by. Another prisoner called to her — “Hey! What did you do? What did she do? Come on, tell me something!” — but she couldn’t answer, and her guards ignored him.

  At the end of an interminable corridor, the dragons holding her finally stopped and unlocked a cell. They tossed her inside and she fell face-first, barely catching herself on numb talons before the weight of her paralyzed wings knocked her down. With an enormous effort, she rolled onto her back to see her captors.

  “That was easier than I expected,” said the queen as one of the HiveWings locked the door. Another HiveWing leaned against the bars, grinning at her. The queen’s voice came from both of them at once, which was still immensely creepy. “You really were a fool to come back into a Hive. And for what? A little bit of graffiti, a few pamphlets that will be ash by evening? Poor naïve little dragonet. As though anyone would believe you over their queen.”

  Cricket couldn’t speak; she wasn’t sure she would have been able to even if her throat hadn’t been paralyzed. She’d never been so scared in her entire life, except maybe the moment when the queen had seen her through the Librarian’s eyes, and she’d realized her secret was lost forever.

  “It must have been so hard for you,” the queen went on, making one of the dragons run his claws along the bars. “Feeling so different, so alone. Watching everyone else come together in my Hive mind, but always left out.” The two HiveWings leaned closer and pressed their faces to the bars, as though she might force them to squeeze through. “But I have good news for you, little dragon. You don’t have to be different anymore.” Their tongues flickered out and in and out in terrifying unison.

  “I can fix you,” hissed the queen. “I’m on my way right now. And when I get there … I can make you just like everybody else. Aren’t you lucky?”

  The HiveWings stepped back, their pale eyes still fixed on Cricket. She felt a tear run down her face and couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  “See you soon, little problem dragon.”

  The sound of their tails slithering away seemed to last forever as Cricket lay there, alone in the near dark.

  Sundew and Blue weren’t expecting her until sunset. They wouldn’t even look for her until after the queen had already come and done … whatever she was going to do.

  No one is coming to rescue me. They’ll never find me in time.

  The queen is going to take my mind and make it hers.

  Cricket covered her ears and closed her eyes and prayed to the only dragon who could possibly hear her.

  Clearsight, please be listening. Please. Please save me.

  When Cricket opened her eyes again, a long time later — almost midday, she sensed — there was an entirely new dragon standing outside the door of her cell, looking in with thoughtful curiosity.
Seated next to her, with an enormously grumpy expression, was Lady Scarab.

  The new dragon was tall and angular and her scales were a bright golden color that almost looked green in the low flamesilk light. Thin lines of black scales outlined her iridescent green eyes and dotted her cheekbones; more black lines traced the veins in her wings. Gold earrings shaped like beetles hung from her ears, a necklace of onyx stingers rested on her collarbone, and her claws were each painted with perfect lines of black and gold.

  Cricket had only seen her once before, across a crowded ballroom, but it was not hard to guess that this was Lady Jewel, ruler of Jewel Hive, daughter of Lady Scarab, and cousin to Queen Wasp. The way she held herself was all regal elegance, as if she were being painted. The only crack in her façade was that she winced a little every time her mother moved, and she seemed to be keeping half an eye on Lady Scarab at all times.

  “Hmmm,” said Lady Jewel. “So this is the dragon who’s thrown my Hive into such a tizzy.” She tapped her chin with one long, glittering claw. “You’re quite small to cause so much trouble.”

  “Small and brainless!” Scarab snapped.

  “Mother,” Jewel said in a warning tone. “You promised you’d be quiet.”

  Scarab growled.

  Cricket tried to sit up and discovered that the paralysis had worn off her wings and neck, although they still ached and she had to move slowly.

  “Lady Jewel,” she said in a creaky voice.

  “No need to bow,” Jewel said, waving her talons.

  Cricket settled back gratefully. Standing would have been a challenge, to say the least.

  “What are you going to do to me?” she whispered.

  “That’s a fine question to ask NOW!” Scarab bellowed.

  “Mother,” Jewel said, giving her a quelling look. Scarab glared at both of them and subsided, muttering. Jewel smiled back at Cricket.

  “You mean, the torture, the experiments, the vanishing prisoners?” Jewel sat down, coiling her long shining tail around her legs. “Not for you. The queen wants to handle you herself.” She shrugged with a faintly disappointed look.

  “But if they were real, I would say you deserve them!” Scarab interjected.

  “MOTHER,” Jewel barked as a prisoner a few doors down called, “Eh? Not real? What’s that?”

  Jewel did something carefully to her face, like smoothing away the cross expression and replacing it with everlasting patience.

  “My mother,” she said to Cricket, “is not normally allowed in my palace, for reasons that become clearer each time she does visit. She has no idea what I actually do with dragons in my prison.”

  “Right,” snorted Lady Scarab. “I’m sure my daughter who once hid all my knives because they scared her has grown up to become a master torturer.”

  “What? Really?” called the nosy prisoner.

  “Faints at the sight of blood, this one,” Scarab added, jerking her head at her daughter.

  “I was five —” Lady Jewel closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. “Let’s talk about you,” she said, opening them again and looking at Cricket. “Do you know how hard it is to get paint out of treestuff? I’m going to have pink smudges all over my Hive forever now.”

  “And you lost my best paintbrush, didn’t you?” Scarab said, lashing her tail.

  “Not that my mother had anything to do with this,” Jewel added quickly.

  “Should have given you an old one,” Scarab growled. “But you weren’t supposed to get caught, you idiot.”

  “Oh my gosh, Mom, seriously!” Jewel flapped her wings, the royal stance entirely collapsing. “I am TRYING to be MENACING AND MYSTERIOUS. Could you be quiet for ONE SECOND while I handle this?”

  “With what, a new necklace and a party?” Scarab grumbled.

  “You may not have noticed, but somehow I manage to be a VERY GOOD HIVE RULER even — I would say especially — when you and your advice are on the other side of the continent!”

  “Hmm,” Scarab said disapprovingly. “The Glitterbazaar would be better if you’d listened to me.”

  “The Glitterbazaar is FINE!”

  “And your schools have absolutely rubbish history programs.”

  “That’s not up to me! Queen Wasp sets the curriculums! Why do you think I have a giant library full of history books for my subjects?”

  “And that table in the front hall is still in the wrong place,” Scarab went on. “It would be much more useful as a sideboard in the dining room.”

  Jewel pressed her claws to her forehead. “Mother,” she said, “maybe you should go visit with your grandchildren.”

  “Not on your life,” Scarab said promptly. “Those brats are very loud and I will not be tricked into dragonet-sitting. Stop distracting me and get on with interrogating this nitwit.”

  “That’s what I am TRYING TO —” Jewel stopped and took another deep breath. She turned toward Cricket with a resolutely serene expression. “You. Cricket, right?”

  “Yes, that’s me,” Cricket said. “Did you read my messages? I’m telling the truth. Queen Wasp is lying about the Book of Clearsight.”

  “I’ve always suspected that,” Jewel said. “Some of our great-great-great-great-grandmothers were not as quick and clever with their lies as Wasp has been. There were hints in the history books, if anyone looked carefully.”

  “The books?”

  “I do read.” Jewel smiled, more or less, a tiny quirk of her mouth. “Despite the rumors to the contrary. I’d be quite interested to read the Book of Clearsight.”

  “I don’t have it,” Cricket confessed.

  “Left it with someone smart enough not to get caught, I hope,” Scarab chimed in again. “She says there’s no line of HiveWing succession in there, sparkles. You know what that means?”

  “That you could have been queen,” Jewel said with a sigh.

  “That you could still be queen,” Scarab said fiercely. “With my help, of course, or else you’d probably do it all wrong. Paint all the Hives rainbow colors or something.”

  “Oh, for the — Mother! You can’t say things like that!” Jewel leaned back to check up and down the corridor.

  “The guards are all the way back at the entrance,” Scarab said, flipping her tail from side to side. “They can’t hear us.”

  “I can!” called the prisoner.

  “You’re a SilkWing,” Scarab called back.

  “True,” he answered. “True.”

  “Lady Jewel,” Cricket said hesitantly. “May I ask — is my sister all right?” She caught herself, remembering. It still felt too strange to call Katydid her mother. “Katydid? She was brought in last night, before me.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Jewel said with surprising gentleness. “The queen is less interested in her, now that we have you. I will find out what she knows, which I assume is nothing, and release her before Wasp arrives.”

  “And that will be when?” Scarab demanded.

  “Very soon,” Jewel answered. “Which, thank you so much for that; I was supposed to have another three days to prepare before her usual Nest visit.”

  “She … she said she’s coming to ‘fix’ me,” Cricket said. “To make me like everyone else. Can she do that?”

  Jewel glanced at her mother, pausing for a moment. “Yes. She’s done it before.”

  “What?” Lady Scarab spat. “You never told me that.”

  “It doesn’t always work,” Jewel said. “And I don’t know how she does it. But we had a pair of dragons in here a few years ago who’d been preparing a case for flamesilk rights. They were pretty old — nearly as old as you, Mother.”

  “So perhaps not total idiots, then,” Scarab snapped.

  “Sure,” Jewel said. “They said they remembered a time when flamesilks were treated like normal members of the community, selling their flamesilk and living like anyone else. Anyway, Wasp didn’t like that very much, so she made my guards drag them in, and she came by and took them into a closed room for a
while, and when they came back out, their eyes were white. And they never argued against the queen again.”

  “I take it back,” Scarab huffed. “Total idiots after all. So every time she threatens to add you to her Hive mind …”

  “She might actually be able to,” Jewel said.

  “But you don’t know how?” Cricket said. “Or what she does to them?”

  Jewel shook her head. “I know it doesn’t work if they have SilkWing ancestors in the last three generations, though. She keeps all those old dragons penned up together in Tsetse Hive.”

  “You didn’t tell me that, either!” Scarab barked.

  “Of course I didn’t!” Jewel said, flicking her wings at her mother. “I was afraid you’d go over there and storm around with a protest sign and get yourself thrown in with them!”

  “Too right,” said Scarab. “Someone needs to give my niece a good thumping.”

  “Well, I would like you to stay in control of your own brain, as annoying as that brain is, Mother. So I would appreciate it if you could not go thumping the queen of our tribe anytime soon.”

  “If someone doesn’t thump her soon, we won’t have any dragons left who can!” Scarab growled softly to herself and paced off down the corridor.

  Cricket tried to stretch the pain out of her wings and neck as she thought. The queen could do something to dragons behind closed doors to make them part of her Hive mind. But surely she hadn’t gone to every dragon in every Hive to do it, one at a time, thousands of dragons over fifty years. For one thing, dragons would remember that happening, so everyone would know how she did it — Katydid would have remembered, surely. And dragons would slip through the cracks, and Queen Wasp just couldn’t possibly have time to get to every HiveWing that way.

  Wait …

  “Lady Jewel,” Cricket said. “Did you say something about the queen coming for a … Nest visit?”

  “Yes.” Jewel tipped her head, studying Cricket. “She visits the Hive Nests twice a year — once in the dry season, once in the rainy season. To ensure that they’re clean and safe and full of eggs, according to her rules.”