“Yes,” I said, “but how. How are the bees supposed to work?”
“Have to be there. Their buzz vibrates it all apart. Bees have a queen, see? And she runs the hive. Bites their heads off. Moves the hive. Buzzing. Always buzzing.”
He wasn’t making any sense now. I looked up at Adigale but she just shook her head. No one expected him to make sense out of anything other than military tactics. Eventually, he finished his tea and was brought to a pallet to sleep and I returned to Osprey’s side, still worried about him and worried just as much about what Victore said. Everyone expected me to change something, but I had no idea how to do that, and tomorrow they were going to go fight. Everything would rest on me. What was I going to do?
I sat by Osprey, holding his hand, and worrying about it as the voices around me buzzed like a hive of their own.
“You need your sleep,” my sister Anfrea said eventually, urging one after another off to bed. A watch had been set on rotation that included everyone but me – despite my protests that I could help. And the main room of the house was full of pallets for all of us without children of our own. The little ones were packed in tight with their parents in the quieter rooms.
My sister blew out the candles and turned down the oil lamps until there was nothing left but the lights for those on watch and the flicker of the cook fire in the grate. I curled up beside Osprey since space was tight. It wasn’t the same as taking a place in his bed, it was just a place to rest on the floor where I could keep an eye on him. If it had been a real bed, my siblings would have disapproved, anyway, but I was as close to Raquella as I was to him lying here.
It worried me that he hadn’t woken up yet. Worried me even more that I felt my bees burning hotter than ever. I slipped my fingers into the cuff around my wrist and felt a burst of relief at the sting of pain from their burning heat. At least I knew that his magic was still strong. That had to mean something.
I tucked a blanket gently around him, gave him a last glance over, and cuddled down into my own thin blanket.
“Guarding your prize?” Raquella whispered sleepily, but I was drifting away before she said anything more to tease me.
Chapter Eleven
I WAS DISTURBED IN the night with a vision from one of my bees.
It buzzed crazily, veering one way and then the next. It took me a moment to realize it was circling Ixtap. He was with two other Hissan in a narrow stone corridor. There was barely enough room in it to turn around. He squatted there, lamp held high over a hand-drawn map in a hand that looked vaguely familiar. It showed a large building the size of a palace and in tiny notes and a careful hand it seemed to indicate hidden ways to move through the place. Ixtap traced one with his finger as his followers looked over his shoulder.
I waited for the vision to leave me, but this time, it didn’t. My bee followed as they crept through the narrow corridor to where a door was bolted from the inside. Ixtap didn’t open the bolt, instead, he reached a dagger tip through a tiny peephole and pushed cloth aside to peer in the room beyond. And then a green glow lit the corridor as he manifested his adder.
I woke with a gasp.
Beside me, Osprey stirred gently and gasped. I put my hand on his chest and felt my bee. The burning was fading and the bee was hard at work, repairing.
Gently, I eased back his blindfold and his eyes flickered open.
“We’re in a house in a Single Wing outpost,” I whispered to him, as quietly as I could. “With my family. You’re safe.”
Beside me, Raquella stirred. Even my whisper was too loud. He turned on his side to face me and I lay down again, this time, on my side so that our noses were only inches apart. My heart was too loud. I felt like the whole room could hear it. Just being so close to him made the feather in my chest ache.
“My bees have stopped burning. I can feel them repairing what’s inside. I think ... I think you’re free.”
“House Apidae,” he said, like my name was honey. But I didn’t hear the rest. I was rocked with another vision. I reached out to him without meaning to, grabbing his arm with my hand as the vision shook me.
Ixtap’s snake was through the little peek hole, slithering into a huge room, decadent with silk screens. An entire wall was carved in white feathers with water flowing over them into a pool where live swans swam lazily in the moonlight.
The snake slithered past them, growing in size as it filled the room, loop on loop. It ignored the reading stand and the table decked in fresh blooms and fruit. It slid past the wide balcony carved with herons in white marble. It slid up to a dais where a wide bed was laid with silken sheets and someone lay tangled in the sheets – heavy and thick of limb, his back to us, his arms tangled through the sheets. Beyond him on a small settee stitched in bird wing brocade, discarded clothing lay crumpled partially covering the white-gold gleam of the Wing Crown.
Ixtap’s spirit snake undulated back and forth before the sleeping man as I blinked against nausea from my bee swinging frantically back and forth like a pendulum. I fought to keep my eyes focused, fought to see through them – and then immediately regretted it. The snake’s mouth opened impossibly large at the same moment that the sleeper awoke, opened his eyes – his brilliant blue eyes, blue even in the moonlight – and screamed.
The sound didn’t even sound human. It sounded like something from deep within the belly of an animal and it went on and on as the spirit snake struck, swallowing the man in a series of spasmodic gulps. Someone was yelling in the background. Someone was pounding on the door. The scream was muffled now as the spirit snake closed its mouth and faded, his victim fading with him so that when the Swan Claws burst into the room, weapons held high, there was nothing left for them to see.
I didn’t realize that there were tears of horror running down my face until Osprey moved to wipe them away with his bound hands.
“House Apidae?” he whispered.
I blinked away my tears. Should I tell him? Probably not right now. He had enough on his mind – and I didn’t know for sure. I mean, I’d never seen the Emperor before. Maybe there were other people out there with Winged crowns and silken bed chambers. Maybe that was the lover of the Emperor and not the Emperor himself – or the maker of crowns. Or a hundred other people. But in my heart, I knew that was not true.
“Osprey,” I whispered, and I felt my bee resonate with my whisper. It felt – free. Clear. It was working hard, and I felt it drawing from my strength and ... his? But it was working, repairing, helping. I sighed with relief. “You’re free ... aren’t you?”
And that meant that even if that was the emperor who had died – if my vision was real – then he wouldn’t die, too.
His smile was like a golden dawn. He lifted his head and then immediately slumped again. “Free and weak as a newborn chick. But still free. I can feel where the binding was – like an empty spot. Like something that’s gone missing.”
I bit my lip. Had my bees done more than they should have? “Do you feel a loss?”
He was quick to shake his head and then wince. “I don’t, but I can’t help but ache at the thought that the innocents I’ve been protecting are now unprotected. While my heart was held ransom, they had some protection. No one would kill them without a cause because they were needed. But now ... what will happen to them now? I have to go to them, House Apidae. I have to ensure their safety.”