Flora wanted to strike Sister Teasel, or scream, or shout that it was her child, that they should tear her apart to save her from her grief. Instead she bowed very gracefully.

“Yes,” she said. “We must.”

FLORA WALKED OUT OF Category One not knowing where she went, numb to the pulsing floor codes. She bumped into sisters and did not hear their words; she passed by others carrying food whose scent meant nothing. While she had obsessively gloried in her forage and fallen exhausted into sleep, her baby son—her son—had hatched and starved and died in agony. No flower on earth could heal her pain, but her steps still took her to the landing board.

Other foragers had the same idea, crowding the corridor until they could move forward and look out into the streaming gray. The close comfort of her sisters about her drew Flora’s grief from her in a ragged gasp of anguish. A gentle hand touched her, and she turned to see an old and battered forager beside her, Madam Rosebay.

“Tell me,” she said to Flora, “is it the headaches? We are all suffering them; no one will betray you. Do you feel it when you come in from the field and lie down? Because I feel your spirit so dull and sad within you.”

Her kindness made Flora long to weep and tell her everything, but she forced her antennae tighter closed.

“I—I long to fly.” That was all she could say.

Another forager, overhearing, smiled. Even in her grief, Flora could still see her beauty through her age and the wounds to her face and shell. She was so old every trace of her kin had faded, and she reminded Flora of Lily 500, though it could not be.

“We will have our flowers again,” the old forager said. “Have faith.”

“We take Devotion at these times,” said Madam Rosebay. “It helps.”

They went back inside but Flora held back from them, devastated at her failure to protect her child.

“Why the long face?” A leg missing its back hooks stuck out across her path. Sir Linden lounged in one of the forager rest chambers in the lobby near the Dance Hall. He indicated the vacant one beside it.

“You are a forager; when will this rain desist? It is dull beyond describing in our chambers, and I grow enraged hearing Poplar or Rowan or some other buffoon praising himself to the skies. As for the food—that is another reason I sit here, that I may overhear some information about the latest deliveries to know if we are fairly fed, for there is never enough choice.”

He groaned. “To think it has come to this, gossiping with a hairy maid in a public thoroughfare. Although you are a forager now, free to throw your earnest bulk wherever you may.” When she did not respond, he pulled a face. “Oh come now—I do not mean to offend you, it is just my offensive nature; I cannot help it. Flowers must be quite something, if their loss for one day makes you so sad.” Sir Linden crossed his middle legs and admired his hooks.

“By the way, since your bilious attack on my rival at Congregation, I find myself quite fond of you—is that not a strange thing to say? And probably to hear, but as you do not speak anymore, I have no idea. So . . . I will leave you to contemplate this or that.”

Flora straightened her wings and felt a new tear in the membrane. Until now she had not felt the wound, nor its throbbing pain.

“So the princess did not see you.”

“Aha; you speak to taunt. Of course she did not, or I would be reigning in kingly bliss far from this gloomy place. With special deliveries of hot-sucked spurge for my ever-so-slightly-aberrant royal taste.” He glanced at her. “Euphorbia. I shall use its polite name after my coronation. At any rate, Her Nubile Regality will find it charmingly adventurous, and let me corrupt her pure palate to share mine.”

“Queenspeed to your desire.”

“In fact, the next time you go out—”

“Spurge is not in season.” Flora found his smell comforting.

“Pah—nothing is in its proper season anymore—I believe this is supposed to be summer and the time of plenty, but you are confined by rain and I am starving.” He sniffed at her. “But no wonder you’re sagging there like you’re waiting for the Kindness—not a molecule of Devotion in your scent. Here.”

Without warning Sir Linden touched his antennae to Flora’s, and despite the lock she had put on them, he pushed the Queen’s Love straight into her brain. The divine fragrance had changed—or she had—for it no longer provoked ecstasy, but gradually it numbed the clawing feeling inside her. She shuddered in relief.

“Better?” Sir Linden smelled her again. “Must be something to it, though I don’t know a single chap who rates it. We’re Mother’s favorites so we don’t need it—but the way you girls go in for it: life or death business! Must be hard for you.”

Flora’s despair lifted. Holy Mother still loved her—she felt it in her heart.

“Thank you,” she said to him. “The rain eases; I must go.”

She ran to join the eager foragers crowding for the board. From this moment on she would be the hardest-working, most devout, dutiful, and self-sacrificing daughter of the hive. It was good her crime had died—it was good—danger would purge her—

The sun broke the clouds, the foragers’ engines roared, and Flora leaped into the air, in flight from her own desires.

Eighteen

THE BREAK IN THE WEATHER DID NOT LAST. A SHARP east wind drove heavy rains over the hills and down across the valley, and many sisters were lost that day. Heeding the early warning from Lily 500’s barometric data, Flora made it back with a scant last load of willowherb pollen and, because there were no ready receivers, took it herself to Pollen and Patisserie. The desperate gratitude of the yellow-dusted sisters baking there made her determined to go out again, but on her return to the board the Thistle guards stood barring all further flights.

“You are too valuable to lose,” one said, with her kin’s awkward jocularity. Flora forced a smile and watched the air as the last few returning foragers managed to land in the rain. All were bedraggled with badly torn wings, some had broken antennae, and they crowded into the corridor to let the receivers salvage what they could from their sodden pollen panniers.

Then exhausted sisters went not to the Dance Hall, but to find a berth for their final sleep. Other foragers touched them as they passed and murmured the salute Praise end your days, Sister. The pain eased from the wounded sisters’ faces and their beauty shone, for to die like this in honor and safety was every forager’s hope.

Flora joined one of the many fanning details set about the hive due to the cold, damp air. First she used her great wing-power in the lobbies, moving when the shift changed to let exhausted house bees rest their weaker bodies, and then when the emergency message flashed through the floor tiles, she went up to the Fanning Hall. A leak in the roof was letting in moisture and sisters rushed to make a chain of their bodies and pass beads of presoftened propolis to seal it. Mold spores had been found on some of the highest honey vaults and every kin but the sanitation workers were called to the fanning rotas, even the Thistles. They came in from the landing board, for no predators attacked a wet hive, and they fanned hard and fast as if heating a wasp to death. Even drones came in to watch, admiring the sisters’ agile antics and calling at frequent intervals for refreshments to be brought to them, as it was a tiring sight to behold.

By the end of the day the rain was still strong, and the spirits of the sisters—the foragers especially—had grown weak. The smell of damp fur and high kin odors filled the hive and every sister’s wings were limp and crumpled from the ceaseless running to and fro to fan or carry. All were desperate for a long, ecstatic service of Devotion. When it came, the comb shivered and the fragrance poured forth, but the beating of the rain or the pressure of the sky had affected the transmission, and the bees struggled to find their natural state of Oneness and Love.