For the third time the bees checked under Mielitta’s bed.
There’s nothing there, they told her again, returning to her mind, which was buzzing with more than bees.
She couldn’t ask them again so, finally, she looked under the bed for herself, pulled out her bow and quiver, her book on survival. She lay on the floor peering into the shadows, thankful for the optimal room lighting as she scrutinised the surface. Only when she was sure that there was not one ripple there and certainly no hairs, did she turn her attention to her weapons.
She drew a short arrow from the quiver, threw it at the corkboard on her wall, enjoyed the ping and thud as it flew and hit home.
She repeated the exercise until there were no short arrows left. She sighed. If only the arrows would return of their own accord. Maybe she could enlist some retrievers.
‘Work,’ she suggested to the bees but they became still, feigning sleep.
We’re not ants! Her inner queen was indignant. We don’t carry weights.
‘Sorry,’ she told the bees. ‘I’m still learning. Anyway, it keeps me fit. I was just being lazy.’
Checking her equipment, changing a flight, smoothing a splintered shaft, merely postponed the moment she had to face what she might have done. She’d destroyed the hermetic seal around their community, brought sickness in, killed people. However, listing the facts of the matter prevented her wallowing quite as deeply in guilt. The mages had been discussing a breach before Mielitta had been outside. Crimvert had not been innocent, unlike the eleven in the Hall. But those deaths had not been by her hand. Maybe the infection had not been caused by her either. All she knew for sure was that she could not trust the mages to tell the truth. Maybe there had been no casualties at all and Magaram’s intention had been to spread fear, gain support for his rule.
As did Rinduran, with one tiny difference. He wanted Magaram out of the way. Mielitta was sure that Bastien’s father was going to use this visit into the walls to his advantage but she had no idea how. When the volunteers – hostages? – reported back in the Great Hall tomorrow it might be too late to rescue Drianne from whatever that conspiratorial look between Rinduran and Bastien had meant. But what could she do? She had her bow, arrows and bees against all the magecraft in the Citadel. Not to mention being under surveillance by all its residents.
Work, the bees told her.
‘How?’ she asked.
Work, they insisted. What if.
Mielitta had not played ‘what if’ since the days when she had little friends to play with. The principle was that you could imagine anything you wanted to happen and then the team would each state a step to take on the way to making it happen. There was no winner but their stories had brought their dreams to life. A dangerous game to play beyond childhood, judging by what had happened to the eleven in the great Hall.
Defiant, Mielitta played what if, imagining Drianne and the others hosted – imprisoned – in the mages’ quarters, then in ‘preparation’ with Rinduran tomorrow before going into the walls to experience history. What if she could be there during the preparation, go into the wall? She could check on what was happening to Drianne, know whether she should risk a daredevil strike or wait patiently. What if she too could go into the wall, experience history first hand, maybe – her pulse raced – maybe even experience her own history, find out where she had come from before the Finding?
She remembered book-words. What if she could be there like a fly on the wall?
Bee, the voices said. Bee on the wall.
‘Bee,’ she agreed. Maybe that would work. In the morning. Nothing would happen tonight. The volunteers would try to sleep and so would she. Rinduran was responsible for them and every citizen would witness them reporting back tomorrow so Drianne should be safe. And if she wasn’t, Mielitta would know. If her plan worked.
Mielitta shelved the survival book in its alphabetical place. She didn’t need the physical copy any longer, having memorised text and images. They made little sense to her at the moment but, as with bees and sunshine, when the experience reached her she would have the words and the understanding required. Living in the Forest would be very different from visiting it and she shied away from the prospect, unless she was forced to flee.
The library was a calm haven as usual and with such momentous events happening in the Citadel, Mielitta felt it highly unlikely that she would be disturbed. The mages had better things to do than seek out books and Rinduran was certainly occupied for the day.
‘One bee,’ she ordered and instantly one bee was hovering, investigating a book.
She remembered the dead bees surrounding her after the attack, the way they’d passed. Or so she’d thought. The way she’d died. Or so she’d thought. But second chances didn’t mean immortality and she didn’t believe them to be proof against magecraft.
‘It is dangerous,’ she told the bee. ‘You might not come back.’ Truth compelled her to change that to, ‘You will probably die.’
She should have known bees better.
Why should this matter? buzzed not only the bee chosen but all her workmates. Work, they agreed. It doesn’t matter who does the work. Each has her turn to be nursemaid, to clean, to tend to the queen, to collect pollen, to die. We tend to you, our Queen. Next, you will want bees to have names. We are all worker bees.
Work, buzzed the one bee selected, happy.
‘I just hope it does!’ muttered Mielitta. Whatever the bees’ opinions, she felt a pang, sending this little friend on such a mission. What if, she reminded herself.
She shut her eyes, concentrated, made an image mapping the route to the Council Chamber, for that would surely be where Rinduran was preparing the volunteers. She shared the image with the bees and they danced it together, so they could reinforce the scout’s mind map. She pictured the bee crawling on the wall, observing the humans, transmitting its impressions.
She danced the danger of getting close to the humans and she showed Drianne. Her mind linked with the bees, she could almost see Drianne through their eyes, as a blue human, with a lilac face. If only she could communicate Drianne’s scent, that would make it easy for the scout.
Mielitta remembered holding the girl as she cried, recovering from her ordeal with Bastien. Her nostrils flared in recall and the girl’s scent burst onto her senses and imprinted on the bees: salty tears and freshly soaped young skin, fear and dried sweat, with base notes of pure sweetness.
The bees were pleased with her and hummed approval. Your Drianne flower, your sweetness, joy.
What mattered was that they had the scent true, not what was lost in translation, so Mielitta just agreed.
Flying in small loops, the scout bee set off on her mission to find Mielitta’s precious flower and report back. A little investigation found a bee space in the door frame and the scout was soon out of the library and out of sight.
What if? Mielitta closed her eyes, felt the bees’ presence, imagined the scout’s route and what the Citadel would look like from the bee’s viewpoint. Dim at first, then more vivid, Mielitta saw the walls either side of her, far from her zigzag flight. Blues and purples, and a macro perspective changed the familiar landscape. The three eyes on top of her head were alert for danger from above as the scout followed her mind map, humming a work-song.
‘Quietly,’ Mielitta pleaded.
The scout was now close to the door of the Council Chamber but there was no detail in the bee’s vision, just woodette, which blocked the way, and shadows, which were holes accessing the room beyond.
Mielitta felt dizzy from the shared flight and relieved when the scout followed her instructions and landed on a wall. The relief was short-lived as her view of the room turned through a full circle.
Glimpses of the room, along with her memory of the Council Meeting, showed Mielitta the volunteers sitting at the table while Rinduran paced about, talking to them. The human voices boomed along the bee’s antennae and Mielitta could only interpret odd phrases.
‘Overwhelming… millions of voices, sounds, pictures… say the search word clearly, focus… each his own search word… different tasks… or distraction… get lost,’ Rinduran lectured them.
A volunteer’s voice. ‘… help?’
Rinduran. ‘Each one… word… get out.’
Then the scout found a match for the picture of Drianne in her mind and buzzed in excitement.
‘Hush,’ warned Mielitta but the bee was on her mission. She flew straight towards Drianne, alighted on her bare wrist. She unrolled her long tongue, sipped the tear-drop that had landed there unnoticed. Mielitta could taste the bitter-sweet tear, feel the human pulse connect with the vibration of the buzzing bee.
A gentle finger touched her striped back, stroked her, whispered something that sounded like, but couldn’t have been, ‘Wh-where are you from, honey g-g-girl?’
Then the bee’s buzz seemed to grow, fill the room and Mielitta realised that the voices had stopped.
‘Get out!’ she yelled.
Get out! the bees echoed.
The scout sensed something, crawled underneath Drianne’s hand to hide but it was too late. Mielitta felt a flash like midday sun knock her onto the table, pin her there on her back, helpless. Magecraft.
Then the voice rumbled, ‘Forest filth. How dare you send your vermin here! I see you, turd.’
Mielitta had only just realised how clear his words were when she felt the mage’s power sear into her. He was looking through the upper eyes of the scout but he wasn’t looking at the bee. He was seeking her, tracing the link between her and the little scout, and she was pinned to the table.
Rinduran laughed. ‘Come and join us. We want to see you, not these pathetic creatures you send. In the name of Perfection, I command you, show yourself.’
Mielitta was helpless to resist as she felt her body wavering, being dragged into the bee’s, the same sickening jolt as she’d felt in the Maturity Barn but this time across a far greater distance and she would have no recovery time. She could hardly breathe, in the blast of magecraft that drew her inexorably to a fate worse than Crimvert’s. If she could only reach her arrowhead, maybe she could make one effort and stab the mage as she fused with the bee on the table. She struggled but her arms were as firmly pinned by her side as the bee’s wings.
Rinduran missed nothing. ‘I can feel your feeble struggle. I can feel your panic. And soon I will see you, know who you are. Then we can have a proper traitor’s death for our good citizens to enjoy.’ His will was entirely focused on her, his eye closer and closer, magnified in hers.
Desperately, she named library books, trying to stay in human form. Flora in Wetlands and Wolds, Delusional Psychosis in One Hundred bz bzz bzzz. She was losing the battle.
Dart, her inner queen told her.
If Rinduran’s attention was wholly on her, he would not be thinking about the pathetic little creature on the table. What if?
Mielitta stopped fighting, let herself whoosh into the oil-black void of nightmares, a whirlpool eye seen through thousands of hexagonal facets. That sucked her into the body of a bee.
For a micro-second, Mielitta and the bee were one. She breathed, ‘Sorry,’ as she bucked her abdomen, pierced the mage’s glaring eye with her stinger and watched the venom drip off the jettisoned dart.
Rinduran screamed, flailed his arms in a blind attempt to hit the unseen enemy as one eye swelled like a balloon and the other watered, equally useless.
‘Call me back!’ Mielitta ordered and as her bees danced her back to the library, the last thing she heard was Drianne laughing hysterically. A reaction for which she would no doubt pay dearly.