I descended into the depths of the ruined Hive and found an entry into the river that flowed underneath it. Somewhere in the far distance, the water must connect to the rivers I’d known since I was a child. The river must run all the way under the mountains, through crevasses carved in the rock. My stomach was roiling from the unfamiliar food, and I ached for a familiar taste.
The waterbugs here were easy to catch. I grabbed four of them, smashing them with a rock from the riverbed. On the way back to my room I found Kinni and waved a dead bug in her face.
“Come on. I’ll show you what real food tastes like.”
She looked like I’d just smeared poop on my face and tried to kiss her. Backing away with a look of horror, she shook her head. “What is that thing? No way!” But she was curious, and she followed me back to my sleeping quarters.
When we got there, I showed her how to peel the shell up and suck the sweet meat from inside.
“Oh, stars, no. No way I’m eating that.”
I shrugged. “Didn’t think you’d be brave enough. I ate your nasty bat meat, but . . .” I let it trail off as I slurped down the second bug, peeking at her out of the corner of my eye.
She stared at the two remaining bugs. I waited, licking juice off my hands.
“Is it squishy?”
I nodded. “So squishy. So good.”
My jibe must have gotten to her, because she picked up one of the bugs. I took the other, and we sucked out the soft meat in tandem.
Her eyes went wide, and her mouth twisted. “Oh, my . . . oh, yuck.” She couldn’t seem to decide if she wanted to swallow it or spit it out. In the end, she gulped it down, her face still looking wretched.
She stared straight at me. “No matter what else happens in my whole life, there will never be anything as gross as that moment.”
I laughed, and after a moment, so did she.
My face turned sober. “I need your help. I’m going to get her back.”
Kinni shook her head. “Who? The Queen? It’s too late, idiot. You lost her. She’s dead.”
I wanted to scream at the possibility, but held myself in check. “She might be alive. But she won’t be for long. And even if she is, they’ll find her and kill her soon.”
The thought of them killing her made my throat tighten up. This girl didn’t understand. She hadn’t lived in a real Hive, watching the bond among the ‘Mites and wishing desperately to be part of it as I always had. And she hadn’t touched my Queen. Hadn’t shared her blood. There was no way she could possibly understand the sickening grief that shot through me at the thought of my Queen being torn apart. This group of humans and their ways were foreign to me, as I must have been to them. How could I possibly convince her to help me? To help a Queen she’d never even seen?
Honesty. I had nothing else to give.
“Look, you’re right. I’m an idiot. I had no idea what was going on, and I want to fix things. But to do that, I need to get back into the Hive, find her, and get her out. I know where she is.” Or was. “I know how to get in, but I don’t know if I’ll make it back out. I don’t have a plan for that.”
She stood up from my sleeping pad and stepped into the doorway, looking over her shoulder. “They won’t let you go. They know you’d die, and we need every human we can get.”
“Not really, though,” I said. “I’m expendable. The Masters—the bugs thought so, anyway.”
She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and smiled. “That’s sure true.”
“So anyway, I need to figure out how to get out once I get her.”
Kinni re-entered the room and sat on my pile of hides. I plopped down next to her.
“We call them ‘Mites.”
“What?” That word I didn’t know.
“‘Mites. The things you call ‘Masters.’ The insects. Dad says the mounds and tunnels they build are like something called termites from the old planet.”
“‘Mites.” I said. “Right. Well, whatever you call them, they’re not going to let me just take her away.”
“They probably can’t smell her now if you threw her in the vat of algae,” she said. “But as soon as you wash her off, they’ll smell her for sure. No way to hide. They smell stuff a mile away.”
“They do?” I had never wondered about their sense of smell before.
“Of course they do. It’s how they get around. They’re blind.”
I’d like to say my jaw didn’t drop, but I’d be lying. Of course they’re blind. They maneuver in total darkness. They stay inside when the pollen storms hit. I thought about the things I smelled outside that morning. The scent trail left by the outcast bug. The way it had used its feelers on the ring left by the Queen larva. The beautiful blue scent of that ring. I had never smelled anything like those scents before. Something inside me had changed. The Blue Queen had changed me.
“That’s the key, then,” I said, after too long a pause. “I need to confuse their sense of smell so they can’t chase me.”
Kinni leaned back against the wall. “They hate the pollen. It confuses them when it hits. Like us in the dark.” She looked at the bowl on the floor in the doorway. “We use it when we’re traveling close to the Hive. We sprinkle it over our back trail so they can’t follow us. Maybe you could . . . . . . I don’t know. Sprinkle it over yourself or something? So they couldn’t smell you as an outsider, and couldn’t smell her?”
“That might work.” I sighed. “She’s in one of the outside chambers they must have added on. It’s got a million tiny holes for sunlight, but nothing big enough for me to get through, even if I could get close enough during a storm.”
The next pollen storm wouldn’t happen for weeks. My Blue Queen didn’t have that kind of time.
“Lexis is working on some kind of explosive,” Kinni offered. “We have some weapons we’ve made, stuff they salvaged from the ships early on, I guess. But she’s working on something that you can set on fire and explode.”
Those words meant nothing to me.
“Right,” I said, trying not to look completely stupid. “I’m not sure if that’s the right thing for now.”
“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “She can’t really control it. It’s just as likely to blow the whole place up, or maybe nothing at all. Can’t count on that.”
“But back to the pollen idea,” I insisted. “I can carry it to the river, no problem. But I need it to stay dry underwater. Do you have something for that?”
She thought a moment. “Maybe. If you took one of the sealskin bags and, maybe . . . covered the seams in wax? That might work. Maybe.”
Another word I didn’t know. Wax.
“Right,” I said. “I’m leaving tonight. The Mast—the ‘Mite that’s supposed to guard me is going to let me go get her. Maybe it will come with me, at least part of the way, in case I get into any trouble. Can you sort out a bag full of pollen with . . . wax . . . for me? Before second moonrise tonight? There’s no time to waste.”
Kinni shrugged. “I can do that.” She stood up and walked over to the bowl, scooping it off the floor. “You’re going to die, you know. You’ll never make it back.”
I knew. But it hardly mattered. I had no Hive. Like the giant insect in the corridor, I was an outcast. And what did it matter if I died? If my Blue Queen was dead, there was no reason to live another day.
Resolved to my fate, I gave Kinni a weak smile. “You never know. I just might surprise you.”
She shrugged again and stalked out of the room.
I pulled the slave tunic off the floor and laid it on the pile of hides. Later tonight, I’d take off these human clothes and put the tunic back on.
Kinni was right. I would probably die. But despite the clothing I had laid out, I would not die a slave.