35 - My Blood is Yours

Nadian smiled and raised the glass of nectar, slipping the straw neatly under his veil, holding the cloth down firmly in the relentless wind. He brushed an errant bee away from the edge of his glass, hissed quietly as she stung him. He grabbed the insect as she did and crushed her, shook the pain and the mess off his fingers with one motion, hiding the tiny corpse with one of his sandals. He turned, surveying the whole court, the knots of political friendships ebbing and flowing as one was insulted here, one did the insulting there.

Smiles and soft words were the coin here and everyone swarming the Emperor. His bee crown, with the jewelled drones quivering on wires close above his brow, shimmered as the worker bees from the Emperor Hive above their heads landed on him and tested the jewelled flowers for nectar.

The court was gathered together in the Hive room, in the highest loggia, immediately under the Sun Crystal, the carved stone support rising out of the copper dome on top of the column of city. As the highest room and with the walls open, folded away, it was perfectly placed for the highest fall should someone misstep. If you stumble in this dance, either physically or politically, Nadian thought it is a fast descent. Either way is suicide and the fall just as fatal.

The hall was placed perfectly to look up river, ‘waiting for the rains’. The river had burst its bed, flooding the canyon floor from wall to wall, from the melt water in the mountains. Above, the Emperor hive roared, the bees restless. The line of cloud pouring down from the heights had been held back longer than usual by the Light but, as every year, the Dark had finally prevailed and brought the water. It would likely be today because everyone’s silks flapped and cracked like flags in the wind, the air full of the smell of rain.

The Emperor’s zardukar sat, off to one side, not at his hand.  She was isolate, fully veiled with all three formals. It made her stand out, a strange distance around her chair.  Diryish had been allowing her to wear merely the face veil instead of the full honour covering, apparently to show all the young men of his court that he was still a potent enough man to keep such a woman happy. 

Now she was covered from head to foot, even though the full veil was so translucent as to be almost invisible. It was still a barrier. She sat, with head bowed, bearing the Emperor’s occasional disapproving glare.  What did she do to make him angry?  It can’t be proven or she wouldn’t still be sitting there, displayed.  She’d be gone.

“I call the Emir-al Shaidan Raghnall before me,” the old man said in a quiet, deadly voice.  The voice of an owner, deadly with the weight of controlling shares. Interesting. The zardukar’s head myrmidon. There had been no rumours of any kind of failure on his part.  But it looked and sounded as if he was about to make the long fall.

The young man, crisp and perfect in his blue-blacks, the screaming warbird picked out in gold on his chest, stood at perfect attention, though the court murmured around him in speculation.

“You, young man, have disappointed me.  I am upset with you and upset with your actions.  You have disgraced yourself and your family, you have disgraced your charge.”  Diryish leaned forward, the rage rolling off him enough to make people recoil another full step away from the Emir-al, toward the mist-veils and the deadly drop. 

Raghnall didn’t move but Nadian was close enough to see a drop of sweat roll down the side of his face from his sarband, down into his veil.  Will he order you to fling yourself off the lip to pay for whatever you have done?  I’d like to see that you pompous young upstart with your oh-so-honourable, upright, perfect self in ruins. Did you, mister perfect, just glance over at the zardukar sitting fully veiled?  Did she just twitch when Diryish called you up?  Oh ho, you both are less than perfect?

“The bees have told me.  The bees reported on you, boy.  You are lucky that the bees still like you, because I don’t really.  Not now.  Give me your collar.”  The young man bowed his head as if someone had smacked him in the neck and his hands shook when he raised the chain of command over his head, the golden insects on it shimmering, and went to both knees, his office upheld on his hands. The Vizier scuttled over, bug that he was, and snatched it so that His Radiance needn’t. 

“You are urgently needed on the Milar border.” Diryish leaned back into the citrine throne. “Since the war the border post there has been sadly neglected.” His eyes flashed over to linger on the veiled girl.  Nadian hid his smirk as the dashing young man had his hopes dashed.  She didn’t look up.

The Milar border was almost as bad a punishment as the high jump. The barbarians' country lay at the end of the earth and the lemurs were just as likely to gut any Lainz as look at them.  The action, the chances for promotion, were all in the other direction, south toward Trovi and beyond, not to the north where the stubborn lemur men had stopped human advancement.  Monkeys, all of them.  Bakons to be gutted or domesticated.

“We trust –“ Diryish’s voice dropped so far that Nadian had to strain to hear.  “That you are as ready to move as any loyal trouper of Lainz and be on your way with all speed.”

“I obey, Radiance!” Raghnall snapped, saluting.  “My blood is yours!”

“Yes, yes, get up and get out of my sight.  Your Amir is here to see you out.”  An older rasheem stepped up to take the once Emir-al by the elbow.  “Your orders are in his head.  Go.”  The old man’s eyes flashed over to the woman again.  All she did was tremble, but that was all that was necessary.  The whole court knew that the bees had found out they were thinking of betraying His Radiance.  The bees were everywhere.  The bees knew.