96 - Long Life to the Most High

Criers had been out for weeks, explaining the appearance and the function of the odd stone boxes in every house in Lainz.  They had grown in every house, even the unofficial cubies in the rock down the column of city below the Basin, the holes along the canyon walls, and the temporary floating houses in the Basin itself, now almost grounded in the Dry.

The day had arrived when they would be made active, and people had found fibre and were given water to begin.  Children hovered over the box, watching.  Their parents hovered less obviously, peering over their shoulders.

“Look! Look!  See it is working, just the way the crier said!”  The exclamation rose all through Lainz in all its variations.

Welcome to the Lainz Information Hive.

The words ghosted into existance on the surface of every box, correctly prepared with a slurry of water and fibre. 

Emblazoned upon every info box is a number.  This is your reception number.  Not only will you receive information from the Highest Loggia, the Queen Bee, about the news in the city and the Empire, if you know someone’s box number you may write letters directly to them.

As the information criers and help drones have explained, for this hive to function it is necessary to keep the box filled with the proportion of water and fibre to produce the sheets you wish to keep.  No garbage.  No organic waste.  If that is placed in the box it will cease to work and must be cleaned and re-stocked. With clean water and clean fibre.

If your box does not function as described, please be aware that the Highest Loggia has an office for your assistance.  It is just above the Basin Market, next to the way to the zardukar school.

There is a day’s delay in the transmission of information, but the Highest Loggia will be working to speed this.  Boxes have also appeared in all Lainz outposts, from Trovi to the Milar border, from the Waste arroyos to the Hipafrey border.

This means that letters may be written and received through this information hive for the exact same delay time as in the city.

Should there be any questions, they may be written to the central hive exactly as all other requests or information of what is happening in your neighbourhood.  We suggest that this sheet of information be the first one that you keep.

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We report that the wind out of the waste today is bringing high levels of toxic sand with it and that all loggias and lesser dwellings on the windward side of the city be more heavily curtained from the outside.

The price of curtain bleach has fallen slightly over the past month.

Hive Lord Farzan has just announced he will be culling his flocks this month and that excess eggs and meat will be available to his followers.

His Radiance’s health continues well. Rumours of his frailty are now laid to rest.  Long life to the most High.

The Hive has now produced another tonne of honey for public distribution.

95 - Come Out, Little Larva

“Come out.  Come out, you little larva!”  Mariush’s voice was rasping as she pushed with the next contraction.  One hand slid up and back to grasp Diryish’s forearm.  “Come... it’s time it’s time it is more than time... I’m so ready for you to be born!”

“Breathe now,” Mother said, crouched in front of Mariush, whose eyes were locked upon the large mirror angled so she could see the birth of her child.

“RRRRRRRRR.” It wasn’t a scream, more a growl, a low sound, and then Mariush stopped, panting.

“Once more and then the hard part will be done.  Let us get this child to the air, child.”

“MooootherrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRR.... Ah Ah AH!”

Diryish flinched as the sudden pain in his ear sent a razor shard of glass through his head... and ignored it... he sent a thought to the hive world data, a tag so he could call back.  Then he went back to this moment, when his hands were being crushed by Mariush as the baby crowned.

“Once more.  Once more.  Push woman!” Thriti’s voice was very firm.  “Push now!”

Mother caught the babe as it emerged, deft fingers unwinding the cord that had been wrapped around the tiny body, cleaning the face, and laid the baby upon her mother’s suddenly emptied belly, soft where it had been distended hard, skin wrinkling and relaxing.

Mariush’s arms came down and gathered the baby close.  

“When did I take all my clothes off,” she said absently as she guided the baby up to a nipple.  “I don’t remember.”

Diryish shook out his hands and forearms, grinning from ear to ear, placed his aching old fingers on Mariush’s shoulders, kneeding.

The afterbirth was almost unnoticed, a minor aftershock, after a ground quake that was enough to destroy buildings.  Mother caught that as well and inspected it to make sure it was all there.  “Good.  Very good.  You have a small tear, daughter, but nothing to truly worry about.”

I see this every time, the baby... she latched onto her mother with an urgency that showed her commitment to life, to living.  She’s strong.  She did not cry.  She coughed, spit out the fluids of birth and breathed and then seized onto her mother with mouth and both hands.  I suppose the larva does not fall far from the hive, hmmm?  As all babies, she is ugly.  As all babies, she is the most beautiful thing on the planet, my daughter, my girl.  I hope I live long enough to see you safe, being raised as an Emir-al’s daughter, in a Emir-al’s house, far away from this toxic royal hive.

Mother cut the cord and wrapped up the package of afterbirth to be dried and kept, and Shashi pushed herself to sitting again and began singing another encouragement to a woman birthing.  People all over the upper Loggias would be listening. The bees came down in a ringing drone and crowned Mariush and the faint fuzz on the baby’s head, tasting the skin of the newborn girl.

Mariush flinched as the bees stung her, and then relaxed as the modified venom coursed in, giving her new energy, beginning to replace lost enzymes.  The baby didn’t flinch and even broke her suction to coo at the bees.  Diryish nodded thoughtfully.

He rose, slowly.  “Women.  I have something to attend to immediately.”  Mother nodded at him as he left and she rose to join Shashi.  The two of them sat and sang together, as if the baby were not yet born.  The two of them lied to the city, listening for the birth of the baby. If the Hive Lords did not know the baby was born yet, it would give them all a little more time before the plotting started, before the possible attacks started.

Mariush, sore, tired and worn out, looked into her newborn daughter’s eyes as she suckled and smiling, burst into tears.

94 - This Basin Boy

This inn for foreigners was so new that the wood was still raw.  Shaidan sank down at the tiny desk under a roof window and rubbed his eyes.  It was likely that the Amir had found the boy and was talking him down off the mountain.  The older man was good at that kind of thing.

Why was the basinboy not falling on his knees in thankfulness that his connection with the highest, shiniest ass in all of Lainz had been discovered?  Instead the ungrateful snip had run away.  Not that the Amir had said anything directly but it was pretty obvious that the whole Talain line was conceived on the outside of the house veil.  To top it off he’d been left holding the empty bird bridle of a mess when the kid had set his warbird loose outside the Unity.

Washing torn down, cats terrorized, a toddler in his sandbox – thankfully – had only been shat upon instead of stepped on and ripped up.  He’d smiled and apologized and paid the fines thinking no diplomatic incidents, no diplomatic incidents...

He dipped his pen and carefully, in his best machine hand, wrote his report of the incident so that when he finally got this whole mysterious, covert, bakon-shit insane mission home he could be sure of his memory of every single coin he had to spend and every single thing he said, so that no one could accuse him of triggering the next war.

 The cough at the door was later than he’d hoped, but finally came.  “A moment,” he called and looped on his veil.   

“Come.”

When Ishfahsalar came in, it wasn’t with the jaunty step of someone whose mission has been accomplished, but with the deliberate motion of a man bearing a lot more weight than expected. “Naser,” he said.  “I found the boy.”

Shaidan raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything, waiting for the full weight to descend. 

“I also found Kyrus Talain,” he said.

“I heard you the first time, Amir,” Shaidan said, wondering at the odd phrasing.  “You needn’t repeat—“

“Senior.  Kyrus Talain, Senior.”

Shaidan stared at his Amir in silence for a full minute.  Kyrus Talain Senior.  Whose kid was the shiny one.  Who is, perforce the shinier one.  Seniority.  Endarkened champion my-shit-isn’t-acid hero of the last war devoured and defecated out by his honourable asshole General d’Molfe.  Alive.  Not dead.

He cleared his throat once.  Twice.  “It was my understanding the man was dead by the hand of the Milari surdeniliarch. There are a hundred songs about the man, and a thousand stories of his glorious last days.  You’re saying he’s alive?  Why here?  Why haunt his own damned grave?”

“He’s alive, Naser.”  Was it his imagination or were his Amir’s eyes actually amused over his veil?  “Apparently his death was faked by the surdeniliarch –“ Shaidan drew in breath to interrupt, found himself holding it as he continued.  “—who just married the man in front of all of the bloody, enlightened country of Milari.  He came out of death a month and a half ago.  We just hadn’t heard the news, Naser.  It was in the courier packet of the fellow we rescued.”

“Acid etched, alkaline scored Light and Dark.” Shaidan actually unbent enough to pinch the bridge of his nose with his fingers.  “You realize, Amir, that if this were a tale in a tavern... I’d leave.”

“A plot derived by a fourteen year old boy.”

“Why, why, why did this boy think to come here, to where his father died... to confront the one who he thought killed him?”

“To be able to confront the man, Naser, I’m certain.  It smacks of the thinking of fourteen year old boys with not much prospect.  And perhaps to be a dutiful son and tend his father’s grave like a good boy.”

“This is EnDarkened madness, Amir.”  How on earth can I kick this upstairs somehow? “I am hardly in good odour with his Radiance, Amir.”

The quirk of eyebrow, this time, was loaded with irony as if to comment on the fact that Ishfahsalar knew very well that the supposed disgrace was a load of war-bird quano.  “Naser.  The surdeniliarch was mentioning that he intended to attend his new ‘bride’ and step-son to Lainz.  A state visit.”

Shaidan suddenly wanted to tear out every hair upon his head.  “A State visit? How are the two of us expected to defend such a train from ‘bandits’?”  He needn’t say ‘supposed bandits’ since it was an open secret that anyone of the Imperial line had suffered from a mysterious case of death of one sort or another over the years.  “Don’t tell me that we’ll just sneak everyone past anyone’s notice fast or ‘incognito’.  The Unity will wail and bark over it for a lifetime, plenty of time to get word of this unusual request all the way to the city itself.  Not to mention that it is yet another cliché that would get this story tossed out of the story circle on the hapless teller’s ear.”

The Amir nodded.  “The listeners would, no doubt, ensure that the storyteller bounced more than twice on the way out, surely.”  For a moment the two of them thought of the absolute impossibility of this little problem when the Amir came to a decision, at least as far as Shaidan could see.  His posture changed slightly and he seemed resigned to something.  “Naser... should this lowly one have a means of inquiring... all discrete like... and impossible like... of his Radiance... should this one attempt it?”

Shaidan stared hard at his Amir, ideas and hints falling together in his head from weeks on the road.  “Amir.  Should the lowly one have such a recourse... then of course you should.  His Radiance would immediately wish to know.”

The Amir saluted and Shaidan could tell the bastard was smiling behind his veil.  “As my superior officer wishes.”  He wheeled smartly on his heel.

Once the door clicked shut behind him Shaidan ripped off his veil, hurled it with great force toward the opposite wall, where it fluttered gently to the floor like a lady’s neosilk handkerchief, and swore in every language he knew.