The High Table was empty for the evening meal, Mielitta’s last as a child among the servants. If Jannlou and Bastien were too busy to harass her, so much the better. No doubt the Council and favoured mages were eating in the Council Chamber while they debated the threat posed by the Forest. Mielitta smiled. Little did they know.
‘M-Mielitta?’ Drianne queried the smile. She was still behaving oddly since the attack, flushing at nothing, avoiding Mielitta’s eyes but watching her covertly. She’d get over it. Especially after the Maturity Ceremony. No doubt Drianne would have her own soon enough and Mielitta was only pre-empting the ending of a one-sided friendship.
‘Just thinking,’ Mielitta told her, still smiling, ‘about the new apprentice in the forge, Kermon.’ All young girls wanted gossip about attractive young men, didn’t they? But Drianne’s eyes flicked away.
Her problem. Mielitta shrugged, reminded herself of all the children she’d befriended, only to lose them to maturity. They’d turned into all those adults who made her squeeze against the wall as they gossiped past her, without even noticing her, let alone remembering her name. Well, it was her turn now.
She looked at the freckled young face opposite her, mouth tight against an unfair world, a world that mocked stammers and difference. What last message could Mielitta give? She leaned across the table, so only Drianne would hear, and the words came out before she could weigh their wisdom.
‘Drianne,’ she said. ‘You are a beautiful person. Changes are coming, good changes.’ The girl flushed crimson but didn’t look up.
Damn. Mielitta had said too much already. The whole point of her plan was to fit in. She continued, ‘You should make the most of your archery until your Maturity Ceremony and then you’ll have adult matters to occupy you.’
Drianne flashed a look of contempt at her, well-deserved. She sounded like a lesson on citizenship!
‘There is more than this,’ Mielitta finished lamely, knowing all too well how it felt to be alone. But this was for the best. Drianne had already suffered from this impossible relationship. In a different world she could have been a sister. But Mielitta could never say so.
She instinctively reached out across the table towards the girl and then realised how odd it looked so she picked up a ball of grey sustenance from the plate in the middle of the table, to hide the gesture. Don’t believe the words, she pleaded with Drianne. Watch the hands. Another of Tannlei’s sayings. But Drianne didn’t look up once, lost in her own misery, and Mielitta could only leave the Hall as if this were a normal evening at the end of a normal day.
In her chamber, Mielitta prepared for the next day. She rolled her discarded clothing into a tight ball and tied it with a spare bowstring. It would be more practical for visits to the Forest than would her lavender gown, which was shaken out over her chair. Inside the gown, Mage Fabrisse had tucked two cream modesty scarves, one for her bodice and one for her head. There was also a garment Mielitta had never seen before. She’d never seen a woman’s undergarment but she was sure that was what she was looking at now, silky and stretchy. She’d grown used to binding her breasts with a shirt ripped into strips but she knew that from now on, she’d have to look the part she was going to play.
Her stomach fluttered with nerves but at least her head was quiet, empty of voices. She lay in bed, waiting for the greylight to dip to black at its customary time. Looking at the lavender colour of the dress soothed her and she thought of all the Forest colours she would see the next day. As the last light faded, she banged her head deliberately against the pillow six times, schoolgirl magic to wake her at a given time. Then she drifted into dreams of flight and flowers.
The pale greylight of morning turned the gown grey too, dove grey, thought Mielitta, excited at the thought of the life ahead, words turned into reality. She would see doves in the Forest. And hear them coo softly as they snuggled up to their mates. Mate. She savoured the word as she slipped into the stretchy silk, adjusted the elastic support, wriggled a bit. It fitted and was comfortable. Why then did she feel so exposed?
She had a hand mirror so she held it at arm’s length to view her new silhouette. Pointy. Curvy. And embarrassing. But there was no alternative so she covered the undergarment as quickly as she could with yards of lavender, tucking the cream scarf down her front. That helped a bit but the shape was so different from what she usually wore. She’d rather have her legs on show and be free to run than display this bare expanse of neck and be cinched into a curved, waisted shape. It felt like an invitation. Mate, she thought. Why had she not thought about that aspect of her adulthood?
She braided her long red hair, tucked it under the second cream scarf and looked at her face in the mirror. Black, slanted eyes stared back at her, unblinking. Tawny skin looked darker and escaping wisps of hair redder against the cream scarves. Whatever she might be, she was no child, but she didn’t need a mirror to tell her so. And if any man, attractive or not, had mating on his mind, an arrow would be within her reach!
She didn’t need hose under the long dress so she’d cut some to make ankle-length socks. They were comfortable with her boots, which she saw no reason to part with. Maybe fresh air out in the Forest would heal that irritating patch on her thigh. Then she realised that her thigh no longer itched. Good! Healed, finally.
She hitched up her skirt to see what the patch looked like now, turning towards the window’s growing light. And she gasped as a thousand buzzing voices woke in her head. The One. Yes, yes, the One. At last.
Outlined on her thigh, a huge bee was pricked on her skin in a thousand dark points, rippling its wings when Mielitta moved.
Beautiful Queen, the voices chorused.
Unnerved, Mielitta threw her skirt back down to hide the bee design. No time for that now. Nor to listen to voices in her head that weren’t there. They quietened. She must live out the lie she’d constructed the day before and her first task was to get to her own secret Maturity Ceremony too early for anybody to know what hadn’t happened.
She rushed across the empty courtyard. She unlatched the familiar door to the forge, ignored a weak clamour in her mind, warning her Smoke! Fire! Fly! and sped through the silent interior to the small door at the back. She had no idea why Maturity Ceremonies were held in a barn behind the forge but she’d often peeked through a spyhole in this same door as a little girl and witnessed the gatherings, longing for the day she too could be an adult.
Today was that day. She was not going to draw the wooden slat sideways and peek through the hole. She was going to go through the door, find a way into the Barn and come back as the fully-forged adult she’d been for some time. The Maturity Barn was forbidden except by invitation but so was the Forest and she’d survived that. No, she’d enjoyed it and she was going to return.
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 pattern 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.