THERE WERE NO THISTLE ON THE LANDING BOARD NOR bees in the lobby, but the smell of alarm came thick from the top of the staircases. Wings unlatched, not caring who saw her, Flora ran straight into the morgue.
She could smell her daughter’s strong scent, even as her brain registered that it had changed. Big, jagged shards of wax littered the floor but there was no blood, or smell of either the fertility police or the Thistle guards. A surge of raised voices came through the comb from above, and with it the vibration of thousands of sisters’ feet, running across the midlevel lobby. Then came a savage, sharp piping sound, traveling through the comb as if carried on the Hive Mind. A few seconds later, an answering burst of piping fired its own frequency through the comb. The two sound waves clashing in dissonance made bees all over the hive cry out in fear.
So frightened for her child she could barely breathe, Flora ran up the main staircase. The scent of battle grew thicker the higher she went, blocking out every scent but that of the Teasel war gland, against Sage.
Terrified sisters clung to each other in the corridors to the midlevel lobby and the scent of venom filled the air. Flora pushed her way through their shuddering bodies toward the dense wall of bees surrounding the central space. She pressed forward in the hot choking air, squeezing her way through the wings and bodies, the only thought in her mind to stand by her daughter’s side to the death—
Thistle guards grabbed her to stop her going farther.
In front of her in the center of the lobby, two huge princesses crouched opposite each other. Each was twice the size of every other sister, and behind them stood a dense wall of their own kin: the Sage, and the Teasel. Every bee in the chamber was silent—except for the low hissing of the Teasel princess.
She was yellow-furred, her face flat and brindled, and her bands bright brown. Flora could see the shining wet tip of her dagger as she slowly moved her abdomen from side to side and sank down lower, gathering her power. A snarl built in her throat, a low echo coming from the throats of her supporters.
The Sage princess began to draw herself up from her own crouch, until she stood at her full towering height. She rasped her wings down her back so the sound filled the air, then she slowly swayed her long pointed face from side to side, her eyes sending sparks of hate at the wall of Teasel supporters. As she began to hiss, the Teasel princess gathered herself to spring.
With a lightning motion, the Sage princess leaped to the ceiling and crumbs of wax fell down where her sharp, powerful claws dug in. The startled Teasel princess looked up, her poise broken. The Sage princess picked her way across the ceiling, her venom spraying down.
The Teasel princess moved faster, and watched as the wax sizzled where she had stood. She drew her huge claws.
“She flees!” Her voice was hoarse and loud. Then she drew her dagger, longer and thicker than any Flora had ever seen, with four lines of barbs instead of two. “A coward may not be Queen,” she called up to her rival.
“Nor may a fool—” The Sage princess dropped from the ceiling onto the Teasel’s back, biting at her wings. The Teasel twisted around and threw her off, but the Sage princess’s claw had caught, and the bees heard the ripping wound. Too fast to give her rival a chance to leap for the ceiling again, the Teasel princess clamped her wings tight to her back and attacked so hard the bees heard their shells clash and smelled their poisons mingling as they hissed and struggled against each other on the comb floor. Their abdomens hard and curved as their daggers stabbed for the other’s body, the two princesses thrashed in a blur of rage—and then there was a harsh scream—and the struggle slowed.
The bees stared as the two princesses lay still. Then there was the sound of cracking limbs, as the Sage princess broke free of the dying embrace of her foe. Her dagger dripped venom, and the Teasel convulsed on the ground before her, stung through the belly.
Even now the Sage supporters did not move or make a sound, but the Teasels gasped as their mortally wounded princess struggled to rise. The Sage princess bent low and ripped the wings from her challenger’s back. She held them up, then threw them on the ground.
“Behold the fate of pretenders.” She turned back to her foe. The Teasel princess tried to pull herself along the comb toward her stricken supporters. The Sage princess walked in front of her. She climbed upon her rival’s twitching body and held her fast, before flexing her abdomen high so all the bees could see her shining dagger. Then she slid it between the Teasel princess’s head and thorax and stung her again.
Only now did the Sage raise their voices, in a strange humming ululation that pierced the bees’ brains and made their stings pulse in terror.
“Behold the Queen!” The Sage priestesses surrounded their champion.
“The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen!”
Flora stood transfixed. All around her she felt the gathering tension in her sisters, as if they would spring or scream or turn on each other.
“The Queen is dead!” repeated the Sage, in their choral voice. “Long live the Queen!”
At these words the Sage princess raised her wings and spread them, and her face was beautiful and terrible. At her gaze, many bees sank to their knees, shaking in fear.
“We have others—” A weeping Teasel crouched by the body of her dead princess. “We have more princesses, we will bring them out as fast as they are born—”
The Sage princess hissed and drew her sting again. “And I will kill them as I killed my own royal sisters, cowering unready in their queen cells. Divine Right to the firstborn—death to the rest. I am your Queen and you will worship—”
A single piercing note tore the air. The Sage princess and every other bee spun around to face the source of the sound. Then the Sage princess piped back in outrage and lashed her antennae, but there was no answering sound. The bees froze in fear and listened. The sound had come from the long corridor that led to the worker dormitories and the Queen’s Chambers, but now there was complete silence.
“Come out!” screamed the Sage princess. “You foul Teasel pretender, come out and die like your sister here!” She piped again and again, until the lobby echoed and the bees shrank together in terror. “You are a coward! Come out!”
“I am here.”
Then every bee’s glands flared in fright, for from the dark dormitory corridor walked a huge black princess with russet fur, long, quivering antennae, a tiny waist, and the strong hooks and limbs of her mother, Flora 717.
“I am the last princess,” her low voice carried. “And I have already wet my dagger with the blood of all others. But one.”
The Sage princess slowly twisted her head from side to side, and began to hiss again. “What foul thing are you?”
“She is my daughter.” Flora stepped forward, her heart thundering in her body. “And I raised her and fed her Flow, so she is as much a princess as you are.”
The Sage princess stared, then she laughed in great hisses. “Kneel,” she said. “Bare your neck for a merciful death.”
When Flora’s daughter did not answer, the Sage princess piped her rage. “Answer your Queen!”
“Not Queen until mated!” Flora called it loudly. Behind her, the floras gathered together, and their dark faces gleamed bronze as they let their scent rise up.
“How dare you—” As the Sage turned to Flora the dark princess ran at her. Fleet and vicious the Sage princess spun round with a slicing claw, but Flora’s daughter parried with her own massive hooks. Lacking the strength to fend off the blows, the Sage princess ran up the lobby wall again to attack from above—but Flora’s daughter followed her, her massive hooks tearing tendrils of wax from the walls, dagger gleaming. With a shriek of rage the Sage princess flew down into the midst of the watching bees, making them scream in terror and crush each other as they struggled to get out of her way—and then she ran through their midst into the empty Category Two ward.
The fertility police beat the sanitation workers to the ground in front of their champion so that she would have to trample them to reach her foe—but the dark princess leaped at the wall and ran sideways above them, so that her great wing brushed across their faces and made them cry out in fear.
When she ran into the big dark Category Two ward there was no sight or sound of the Sage princess, but the air was misted with her venom. For a moment there was silence—and then with a terrible shriek she dropped from the ceiling above and stabbed at the dark princess with the full length of her sting, so that the two huge princesses hurled their joined bodies in rage against the cribs and the wax cracked and split around them.
Terrified by the combat but desperate to see its end, the bees followed, climbing over each other to escape the two roiling princesses as they slashed and bit and half flew, half staggered between the rows of cribs, neither one willing to release her hold. As the dark princess reached out to swing a great shield of wax against her rival’s head, the Sage princess let herself fall, so that her heavier foe lost her balance. With lightning speed the Sage princess twisted and leaped on top of Flora’s daughter, seizing her antennae and piping her screaming war note directly into them to destroy her brain. The high harsh sound paralyzed every bee but the Sage, and thousands screamed out in pain. The dark princess jerked her head in agony but could not release herself.
“Submit and save them—” The Sage princess piped louder, and bees screamed for mercy. “You make them suffer—”
A huge roar tore the air—its force blocking out the piping agony and beating waves of power through the air. It came from the engine of the dark princess as she beat her wings against her rival and threw her back. Before the stunned Sage princess could rise, Flora’s daughter was upon her, crushing her under her greater weight. Then she reared up, her dagger poised for the coup de grace—but did not strike. Instead, her antennae pointed high.
In the sudden silence, every bee smelled the foreign scent. Their fur stood high with fear and their antennae pulsed. Wasps were in the hive.
The Sage princess sprang free, a gaping wound in her thorax. The priestesses dragged her to safety behind their bodies.
“She lives!” they shouted. “Behold the true Queen, kill the pretender!”
“First the wasps!” roared the Thistles, and the bees cried out for action, for by the high formic tang in the air, their enemy had entered in great numbers.
“First the true Queen!” shouted another of the priestesses. “Declare the rightful Queen, then we shall win—”
“No! Defend the Treasury!”
“Fight the wasps!”
Panic streamed in the air and all was chaos. The Sage gathered their princess into their midst and ran through into the Category One ward. Bees milled in all directions, not knowing what to do. The Teasel stood helplessly, stunned at the ruins of the Nursery. Flora ran to her daughter and pulled her by her wet fur.
“Come,” she said to her. “Food—then you will strengthen—please, daughter—”
The smell of the wasps grew stronger—they were coming from the bottom story, their numbers swelling. Flora grabbed a Thistle guard.
“Help me,” she cried. “The princess needs food to lead us—break open the Treasury and I will bring her—”
The sibilant voices of the wasps were coming up the stairs. Soon they would be in the midlevel. The Thistle nodded. She signaled her sister guards, and then, readying their great claws, they ran quietly to reach the Treasury before the invaders.
“For the sake of your hive, come with me.” Flora pulled her daughter by the wing and they ran. Terrified bees followed them, crying and weeping as they smelled the wasps pillaging the bottom level of the hive, their foul jests echoing in the Dance Hall. Her own mouth dry with fear, Flora dragged her daughter into the Treasury. She knew what they must do but she could not speak.
Rip them all open—and drink. It was the Hive Mind, and the bees heard. They climbed the walls and clawed and gouged open all the newly sealed honey vaults. At the scent, Flora’s daughter ran to drink and immediately her scent flowed more strongly. She raised her head, then pressed her abdomen into the comb, and buzzed against it. The sound reverberated through the Treasury and ran through the wax. In the midlevel below, the wasps shrieked in recognition of their prey above, and ran to find them.
“Let the honey flow!” Flora shouted. “Let it pour across the comb—everyone into the corridor—there is a way—” She ran into the corridor, searching for the hidden staircase that led to the morgue. Behind her the Thistle yelled as they ripped open the vaults, the precious liquid wealth beginning to seep down the walls and onto the floor.
“Holy Mother forgive us—” cried the guards as they broke open more vaults, and the air filled with the cured fragrance of a million flowers.
“More!” cried Flora. “Use it all—” She pulled her daughter behind her as the thick golden tide of honey flowed over the wax and into the surge of wasps rushing up to meet it. They hissed and screamed as they were caught in their hearts’ desire, and were trampled by the greed of the coming horde behind. They screamed as their wings stuck and their legs broke, but their sisters did not care as they ran over their drowning bodies, screeching for joy that they had breached the bees’ Treasury.
Flora’s daughter ran behind her down the steep dark staircase, a weight of bees behind them. Every few steps she buzzed her abdomen hard against the comb walls as if she would break them. Flora feared she was mad but then knew it for a rallying call, for as they emerged through the morgue the bottom story of the hive was packed with thousands of sisters fighting the intruding force of wasps.
With a great battle cry, Flora’s daughter threw herself into the fray, slashing forward, tearing heads from bodies and killing all she could so that the wasps began screaming in fear and retreating. Behind her the bees roared in rage and triumph, breathing in her scent for courage and pushing forward to rout the wasps until none was left alive inside the hive and those few who survived fled the landing board.
STUNNED BY THE VASTNESS of the orchard world, Flora’s daughter staggered in the dazzling bright air. She lost control of her antennae and her panic streamed. She tried to push her way back inside from the landing board, but it was too crowded, for she had rallied all the bees who would come to follow her.
“The Sage have led the victory!” A priestess ran out onto the board, her wings ripped, one antennae broken. “Our princess lives—come back to crown her. And as for your kin”—she spat at Flora and her daughter—“death within or exile without; that is your fate. The one true Queen survives!”
Looking out beyond the orchard, Flora did not answer. In the distance, a huge dark veil rose and fell in the blue air. The high whine of the wasp army grew louder, and the black veil drew together, building its power as it approached.
“They have joined many colonies together.” Feeling her daughter’s fear beside her, Flora forced her voice to stay strong as she spoke to the priestess. “We cannot fight them, we must save ourselves—”
“Flee like cowards?” The priestess’s eyes were wild. “The Sage will triumph—with Divine Right!”
Flora grabbed the priestess and shook her. “Do you not understand yet? Our hive is lost and all who stay will perish! It is too late!”
“You address the Melissae, invincible kin of Queens!” The priestess shook herself free and ran back inside. “Strength in Sage!” she screamed. “Come now, the devout, and stand together!”
“You call them to their deaths!” Flora shouted after her. But when she turned to her daughter and the massed kins crowding out onto the landing board, her heart failed her. The black cloud spread wider across the sky and the buzzing of the wasps filled their minds.
The pressure of bees fleeing from within the hive forced more and more of them out onto the landing board, and those nearest the edge were pushed off so that they whirled in terror above the hive. Too hoarse to speak, Flora tried to bite and push her daughter off the edge, but she was too strong and paralyzed by the height of the sky and the oncoming wasps.
Some of the drones came crashing out of the hive, battered and bloody, some burned with wasp venom on their feet. Flora grabbed her daughter’s antennae and twined them with her own. As Lily 500 had once done to her, with a great burst of concentration she forced all her knowledge into her daughter’s mind.
LEAD YOUR PEOPLE! she thought to her with all her strength. She felt her daughter’s antennae pulsing in pain but she did not let go. SAVE THEM NOW!
“How?” her daughter cried out. “I do not know—” But even as she spoke, her engine thundered to life, its sound ripping the sky and tearing aside the sound of the oncoming army. Her massive copper wings hummed to power and her scent streamed behind her like a cloak. Roaring their engines, the orchard bees launched themselves up behind her, a great soaring army rising into the air, blood and honey on their feet, war on their wings.
Flora hurled herself up beside her daughter, guiding her higher and higher up to the colder air where the wasps would not fly. The huge buzzing army passed beneath them, and the bees could smell the sugar they had fed on, which drove the rage of their attack.
You will bring disaster on your hive.
Flora watched in horror as the black cloud began its descent on the queenless hive, smelling of honey and defended only by the empty prayers of the remaining Sage.