152 - No Bees in MY Court

Nadian stood to one side of the Emperor’s bedroom door as near as he could get to his wife's chair, without appearing to crowd.  It would never do, to look too eager. The Great Hive from the rooms above was restless and periodically a wave of bees would swarm down and over the door and his wife, of all creatures. She seemed to have no problem with the disgusting swarms coming and going over her.  

General d’Molfe stood smiling into his veil on the other side and once after the bees had swarmed, and gone, Nadian caught his eye and they exchanged solemn nods.  Billiph and the younger Hive Lords were over by the stone table, talking quietly.  

The new mandery school director, female of all things, Amardad Mastureh, stood off to one side, not interacting with anyone in any significant way.  Her face was barely visible beneath the formal teal and gold veil. The new dees were the unknown force in the city and he'd have to keep an eye on them -- later.  For now there was no sign that they might be a true power in the country.  The fact it was a woman as the head of the school had ensured that he never even considered disclosing his hard-won skill.

The zardukar were in and out of the Imperial chamber, and the doctor had looked out once but retreated in the face of all the questions.

Everyone knew they were finally on the old man’s deathwatch.  There was no way he could come back from this stress.  He’d barely fought off the chamberlain’s attempt, clumsy and obvious as it was, so that had given everyone an idea of how weak Diryish truly was.

Only Nadian knew that his Radiance had fought for the baby's lungs. Only Nadian was certain that the child, since she'd survived, must be weakened -- and her mother.  There was no way that even Diryish would have stopped their lungs from dissolving into scars and mucus.  They would both be vulnerable to the slightest attach on their breathing and Diryish was obviously... finally... done.
 

The roads around the Sunrise Loggia were jammed with people, no one that the Emperor knew, of course.  But they knew it was coming as well.  Apparently the lowest of the low even had some understanding when their sun itself was about to set.  Of course the Lin had it all over the Empire.

The data editors were all in the room, no matter their original rank or status.  Men and women both, mostly retired zardukar too wrinkled to pursue their calling.  Who would want an older woman... he coughed at the thought... or man... in their bed?  It was disgusting.  Far worse an idea than a wrinkled female bag of bones in one’s bed and properly assigned, but a man?  He reached out a hand and snatched a glass of wine from one of the servitors.

There was no need to try and kill the old man anymore.  If Diryish died before these two so called heirs of his showed up, Nadian was in the perfect place to step up as regent and that baby girl would disappear into the nursery and never come out.  No muss, no fuss.  The two sword bucks could be paid off and sent off with a pat on the back and a peacock snake in their bedding and no one would miss them in the slightest.

 He felt the tingle as his brother’s bugs slithered out of a crack in the tiles next to his foot. Brother, you aren't going to get any closer to the highest seat by attacking either me, or the old man.  Nadian drained his glass, stepped over to set the empty vessel on a side table, where a servant made it vanish.  Then he deliberately scraped a chair over the bugs now exposed, set his bootheel on one, seemingly by accident as he sat down.  Billiph was so awkward.  His bugs were so big and so easy to destroy.  Not one could even make the leather of his boots deteriorate, much less get any kind of illness in even to touch his skin.

Nadian leaned back in the chair and tasted the various odd tangs in the room.  More than bees flew here now, though everyone pretended that they were the Emperor’s.  They were parasite wasps and beetles quite unlike the doctor’s.   

Tiny moths and dragonflies, butterlies and the servants swept crawling things over the edges of the windows; things some Hive Lords had learned to do in the short time that mandery and clinery were no longer anathema.  Nothing capable of flight, nothing subtle.  Nothing small as dust on the wind.  No one can do that yet, he thought.  No one but me, and it takes too much energy.

 It was so much easier to just be here.  Closest to the door.  His wife sitting door guard for the old fart.  Let everyone else’s plots bounce against the years of being indispensible for his Radiance.  My first act as Radiance will be to move the government out from under that seething mass of pulsing nastiness.  No bees in my court.