21 - Why did You Get Taught?

Nadian drew a careful line along the image on his table. It expanded his loggia by as much as ten percent more.  He set the pen down, rubbing along his bottom lip.  The amount of blood he needed to draw the expansion made him think again about how sore it made his mouth and perhaps there was a better way of bloodletting.  This was the second biggest attempt at clinery he’d ever done and the first had failed for no reason he could see.

He laid a finger on the completed drawing, and held in his hand a small ball of wax that would become the model and concentrated.  In the night, the stone bees rose, roaring out of their hive and away from the jobs they had originally been tasked to, soaring in to examine the requested changes with feet and feelers.  Nadian held himself from flinching as their feet tasted his sweat.  Disgusting things, he thought before pulling his attention back to where it was necessary, to make his own hive greater.

In his bedroom, Diryish woke as the Great Hive did.  “Dark above, what is going on?”  He drew his slippers on as Mariush blinked at him from the bed.

“What’s wrong, my zardukaro?” she said sleepily.

“Nothing that I can say anything about right now.  Go back to sleep, beautiful.”  She smiled and laid her head down.

On the balcony, a swarm of bees flew, around and around and around above the same spot on the table, ignoring the night blooming flowers.  When Diryush stepped out, they dove to land on him, distressed.

“Shh… Shhh little sisters,” he said and drew in the information they stung him with.  “Hmmm.”  His head and arms were covered with bees and he was careful not to move too fast to either crush or disturb them as he sank onto a stool, letting the wind and the information into his awareness.

“No.  I did not authorize such a change,” he said at last.   

“Priority override.  Continue fixing the overstrained farming terraces, little sisters.  We will plant a whole new hive of flowers for you all along that edge once it is properly reinforced.”

He held out one hand and called “Security code Aleph.  Block unauthorized access.  Seekback directive four eight three.”

He held out his tongue and the bees buzzed up to taste his commands, his words, tickling, before buzzing away into the night to share his instruction.

In Nadian’s workroom the image he’d so carefully drawn, began deteriorating even as he tried to make the wax model form.  The bloody lines he’d so carefully traced began to turn black and crumble, even as he bent his will on it, his heart racing.

He saw the bees begin to arrive and recognized them as a security line from their size and their markings.  A dozen flew in and he leaped to his feet, closing the doors so they not get out and go back to the Emperor, revealing him.  The bees landed on his crumbling, burning drawing and tasted the blood lines.

Nadian, furious, began smashing them.  “No, you won’t find out who I am, you won’t take my blood traces anywhere you stupid insects!”  He had to pursue the final three, buzzing against his closed balcony doors and all three managed to sting him before he squashed them against the stone.  “Light and Dark above!  Why?”

He sank down at his ruined work, the stone table littered with gooey bits of tiny bees, fragments of wings, bits of charred paper where the heat of the failed working had burned his drawing.  Faint trails of smoke drifted above near the ceiling and the wax that would have been his working model had dripped down the table and made a thin column to the floor.

“Why?  It was just a little change.  It wasn’t like I was trying to do anything like ruin pumps or poke holes in reservoirs!”  His fist clenched he smashed them down on the wreckage.   

“Poison you, whoever stopped me!  Some mander who was properly taught… where were you taught?  Who are you?”

Exhausted by his attempt he only manage one or two strikes and put his head down on the table, covered with flakes of char and fragments of wax.  “Why did you get taught and not me?”