3 - I Hope It Was Worth It

 A lightning bolt seems to hit, right behind my eyes and when I can see again, my whole body hurts.  I’m lying flat on the throne-room floor, with every other zardukar. People are slumped over their desks or slid under them. Da is on one knee, one hand on the floor.  He’s shaking his head and there’s a trickle of blood under his nose and his courtesy veil is stuck to it.

My own nose is bleeding and Ky... he’s on his knees and there’s blood on his veil and from one or both of his ears. I’m seeing doubles and triples and more. Ow.

“Kyrus!” That’s pa, who’s just now made it to his feet. “Beloved! What was that? Are you all right? Kyrus!!”

I close my eyes and all of a sudden I’m in code.  There’s this thing in our code running around like a miniature legged bush-dragon spitting flames and acid everywhere, coding built up for years is being melted down into meaningless waxy slag.

There’s a yell from over a hill of applications.  “Security!  Zardukar!  Firewalls!  Retreat to wall two.”

I don’t recognize the voice but he’s sensible and there’s enough of us able to work here.  I call up veils of my own, fire blooming from my fingertips, to obscure the code behind me, to make it look as though everything has burned by the security thing attacking us.  Bees are cutting chunks of code away like damaged hive and, en-mass, hauling it back out of harm’s way.

Shashi... yes it’s Shashi to my left and Kurazon to my right. My fire burns green, Shashi’s burns a coppery gold and Kurazon a dark purple.  We lay down a latticework to keep us all safe, to make it look as though this section of code is flaming up and then dying down hidden under Kurazon’s dark colour.  All around us there are zardukar, Hive Lord Sander, his sons and daughters... I can feel them. 

Thank goodness the security program is small and stupid and this isn’t an aware, concerted attack.  “Cover up...”  It’s a man’s voice that I don’t recognize, speaking Lainz... or he’s coding with a Lainz accent.   “Hide... grab code and hide...”

Kurazon... she’s pregnant so has energy to burn and lays a wonderfully obscuring haze of light over the ruins of code.  Shashi and I and the others all let our fires die away.  The security thing seems to sniff.  It shoves its snout under the crumbling edges of what it has destroyed.  How could this little thing have hurt us so badly. 

Stepapa isn’t here. I think he’s unconscious.  If the old Radiance didn’t dare approach Prime... did stepapa try?  He really shouldn’t have.  Oh, fak.  I can’t turn my attention away from appearing ruined and destroyed... oh thank the dark.  It’s going away.

The security code thing shakes flakes of char off itself and trots away from us, so much like a dog I expect to hear a whistle as Prime calls it back.  The problem is that it is so much more dangerous than a dog.  More common here than a dog, more intelligent.  But we showed it what it expected to see.

It fades in my coding vision and I hold my true breath until Shashi gives the ‘all clear’.  I don’t want to go back into my physical self right now.  It hurts.

**

Da... he had to help in the code and couldn’t go running off to help his own da in the emergency.  That part of being siwion just sucked. But now the coding crisis was over and he could cram himself back inside his own skin and go to da.

“I checked,” Werfas said as Kyrus drew in a deep breath and tried to get up.  He only managed to climb onto his feet, using his desk as a ladder. “He’s all right.  He managed to block most of the strike but it knocked him out.”

From above there was a hum and in the opening of the hive a solid plug of bees emerged from the meditation space, flattened out and extended legs as if the thousands of bees merged to form a single entity that carefully climbed down the ladder.  A gigantic bee that stalked down in front of Ilax, crouched down and then disintegrated into its thousand thousand component parts, laying Kyrus’s unconscious body gently onto the throne room floor.

He was bleeding from nose and ears and the corners of his eyes, but his chest rose and fell slowly, his wrists and neck encircled with collar and bracelets of bees. Ilax sank down into a cross-legged stance and gathered his husband into his arms.  “He’s all right.  The bees have him.  He shouldn’t have tried to just listen in on Prime.” He drew in a deep breath as everyone else pulled themselves up out of where they’d fallen crumpled when Prime’s strike had brushed past them.

People were cleaning themselves up, drinking water.  Servants were suddenly at the doors with restorative drinks and food.  Someone must have called for help.  This wave of code strike must have ricocheted through the whole city, perhaps the whole empire, from Trovi to Milar.

“I hope this was worth what he found out,” Ilax said quietly.  “I truly do.”