162 - A Strange World

Everyone stood, still connected, quivering, waiting to see if any dead thing would stir.  Elemfias pushed her way out of the mess -- thigh high on her legs -- and beat the dust off herself slowly.  Everyone in the defile followed suit.

As much as Kyrus wanted to just collapse and sit down where he stood, leaned over instead and offered Hara a hand up.  Hara’s bird stood, one foot held awkwardly partly up off the ground, trailing blood down its claws.

*Lainz zardukar contact: Amir Isfahsalar. Siwion contacts registered. Great Hive consideration proceeding. Zardukar offline.* The contact from the city cut off abruptly.

*Amir* That came from practically everyone in the party. *We need to talk.*

*Certainly.  Once we’re out of this.* He sent, calmly, solidly as if he were lying on his own couch instead of half buried by rotten flesh and bone dust.

As the contact ended, all the bees that had been zipping around the battlefield seemed to descend on both Kyrus and his da.   

“OW, that smarts!”

“Don’t smack them, Brilliance!”

“Ow! Don’t smack them?  Why? Ow!”

“You need them.”

“Ouch! Ow!”  Kyrus next to Hara was suddenly covered with bees, standing frozen.  “Now, ow! What?”

*Something you need to endure, lad.* The Amir sent.  *The two of you are being vetted by the Great Hive.*

“OW! Endarken it, that hurts worse than it should!” That was Kyrus senior, on the road, also covered with bees.

“It will.”

**

Shashi sank down on a tripod stool in the outer chambers of the Imperial suite, as the connections the zardukar had spun out so far, reaching out through the bees and other programming bugs, came coiling back.  Enlightened that takes it out of us.

*Reports*

*Security stable*

*One in five zardukar down for recovery*

Given that they had never tried, or had need to reach so far out of the city before and had never done so before that was astonishingly good.  *Percentage of functionality?* she inquired of the remaining zardukar.

*Forty-Eight percent.*

That wasn’t so good. *Take half off-line to recover.*

*Suspending current non-essential functions.*

It was unlikely that they would be needed to code any kind of emergency soon but that was the quickest way to get everyone back up to full strength, without touching the security around Diryish.  She had called every one of the Great Hive Lords’ wives out to watch with their husbands.  It was time to make the elaborate social connections work properly.  Diryish had just let things slide along.  For too long.  The men were all in there, suddenly required to remember that they were all families, not just minions.

It was astonishing now that all the women of the Hive Lords, coming out to watch with their husbands, had changed how the Great Hive chamber felt.  Uncle Diryish, I hope you have time for me to show you that just keeping all the things your father set up was a major mistake.

**

Nadian was seething as he escorted his mother to a comfortable chair.  There was his sister as well, on her husband’s arm.  Pregnant again.  He hadn’t seen her in years.  She’d been having and losing children for quite some time.

Why on earth is Kurazon glaring at me like that?  I’ve left her alone.  I haven’t DONE anything wrong! He settled mother in her seat. “Nadian, be a dear and fetch me a skewer of bees?  If I know Diryish he’s not going to die today.  He’s too stubborn.”  The little dog settled down, sitting at her feet.

He started at her in shock.  Who was this knowledgable woman? “Of... course, Mamman.  I’ll be right back.”

“And fetch Billip and Kurazon will you?  It is time that the Basserus clan stand together.”

“Mamman?”  He couln’t help stammering.

“Nadian, I’ve been too long out of things.  We need to talk to one another again.”

All around the room, slowly shifting clots of families coalesced around the matriarchs, calling their children to them, pulling apart all the alliances the men had so bloodily built up.

“Of... course, Mamman.” I’ve stumbled into an alien world here. I hate it. I don’t know how to control it, how it works.

**

Dukir sat up, slowly, brushing off the dirt that had almost succeeded in burying him, Raghnall pulling himself out of his own pile of death and dirt.  He’d had to get down so that he wouldn’t fall over, when he’d reached out to give the zardukar a line to home in on.

Shashi my dear.  We should be home in two days if we push and we’ll push.  He had a cascade of images from the data stream he’d gotten from his daughter, that he had to go through.  Later.