Flora concentrated on calming herself, trying to synchronize her nervous system with her sisters’—but her mind streamed with memories of the air, and her travels, and the life she had lived before. Her tongue twitched to unroll into the sticky little mouth of a mallow, or gather up fat creamy grains of poppy pollen. She could almost feel the capsules weighting her fur and smell their savory aroma as she combed them into her panniers. She wanted to draw in the cool, herbal tension of plant stems under her feet, not the dust from some sister’s back. But more than anything, she wanted dew.

She must have slept, for she woke because the Cluster was stirring, rotating its layers so that all bees moved up toward the top where they would eventually be fed, then revolving back down. In this way the Cluster would travel the walls of the Treasury, opening honey cells as it went, and always would the Queen be fed first.

The smell of honey percolated through the layers as a new kin group was fed, and Flora’s appetite returned with a burst. She looked around for the source of the food, but after several hours, the Cluster had already re-formed and the sanitation workers had barely moved. As she scanned up the dense ball of her colony, Flora knew it would be many days before they ate.

She carefully extricated herself and joined the two workers next to her together to seal the gap she left, then picked her way across the surface, treading lightly on her sisters’ thousand backs so as not to disturb them. At last she smelled a faint trace of sky and found the ragged wing-tips and toughened thorax of another forager.

“Madam Rosebay.” Flora whispered, for she saw the other stirred restlessly. “Can you sleep? I cannot.”

“No! And I cannot bear this confinement, and do not tell me about the Last Feast, for my belly eats itself. How long before our layer moves in for feeding?” Madam Rosebay’s voice was hoarse with anxiety. “Foragers should not have to wait, foragers do not need to Cluster. Why are we even here?”

Other bees shushed them from all directions.

“House bee prisoners,” she retorted. “I will not hold a sister’s hand for the rest of my life—I have spent my life on the air, I will find food for us now.”

“Sister . . .” Flora could hear the wind roaring in the night. “Not now—”

“Yes, now! I go wild with this confinement—”

Madam Rosebay broke the link with the two house bees on either side of her and climbed unsteadily onto the surface of the Cluster to stand with Flora.

“Sister, please, it would be better in the morning—”

“I cannot bear another moment here.” Madam Rosebay unlatched her wings and Flora saw they were withered on her back. At her look of horror Madam Rosebay pulled one round and gasped. “My wings. Oh, my wings. What has happened—help me close them, Sister. It must be the cold—they will come straight again.” She tugged at them and they tore. “These are not my wings,” she whispered to Flora, “my wings are whole and strong. They must be underneath. I must shake these free outside.”

Madam Rosebay ran down the Cluster, waking many bees. She jumped for the Treasury wall but could not hold on. Scrabbling and clawing at the walls she fell to the bottom of the chamber, crying out in pain.

“Forager sister!” she called out to Flora from the black depths of the Fanning Hall floor below the Treasury walls. “Help me to the landing board! My flowers are waiting for me, they will not open until I reach them—please, you must help me!”

Flora ran to the edge of the Cluster and jumped onto a Treasury wall. She climbed down over its sealed vaults all the way to the bottom, where many sisters’ bodies lay dead upon the ground. Madam Rosebay stood among them, struggling to spread her withered wings. Her legs gave way and she reached out for Flora.

“My flowers,” she whispered. “They are waiting. You must go.”

“Yes, Sister.” Flora sat down beside her and stroked her antennae. “Tell me of your flowers, so I shall know them.”

“Willowherb,” said the broken forager, “has the best nectar. Remember that.”

Flora waited until Madam Rosebay was still, then laid her with the other bodies.

“You are very kind,” said a familiar voice. “I never knew.”

Thirty-One

IT TOOK A MOMENT FOR FLORA TO SEE SIR LINDEN, SITTING hunched and small at the foot of a broken Treasury wall. The sight of him made her glad.

“I could have shown myself at any time before this,” he said, “and met a quick end. Now I must die of starvation, like the coward I am.” He looked up. “Unless I call out for someone to come and finish me off.”

“Do not disturb their rest. Where did you hide?”

“In plain scent—I joined your work party: look.” And Sir Linden pulled his antennae in short and blunt, hunched his back, and dropped his head. Even his wings seemed lower set. He scuttled from side to side, his gait quick and anxious like a sanitation worker’s. “I think they smelled the difference, but of course none could speak it. Or perhaps . . . fool that I am . . . I thought them kind enough to allow it.”

They both looked up at the Cluster. Flora hesitated.

“There is room up there, among us. At least you would be warm.”

“Oh, yes, one’s own blood flowing freely from one’s wounds is very warming, for a short while anyway. Do you think me crazy?”

“The bloodlust is past. No one will hurt you now.” Flora began to climb back up the Treasury walls.

“Wait.” Linden followed her, his movements weak. “Could it work? Why would you do this for me? You are unnatural. Though that is not news.” As he drew level with her he tried to puff his thorax. “Yes, thank you. I agree to your plan,” he whispered, “but surely my noble groin will draw great interest? Some sister will long to groom it—”

“You will be quite safe.”

“Good,” he whispered back, “for my popularity fatigued me in the Season, you know. Very greatly.”

THE SANITATION WORKERS hung silent in their latticed sleep. Flora signaled Sir Linden to wait while very gently she unhooked a couple of sisters, then she beckoned to him. They murmured and stirred as she joined him between them. He grimaced as he sniffed them, then entwined his arms and legs.

“Still quite a strong-scented bunch, aren’t you?”

“Be glad of it.” Flora let a wave of her own scent cover him. “And be quiet.” She trod on him as she climbed up one level of hanging sisters.

“Wait—where are you going?”

“You talk too much.” After her journey to the Fanning Hall floor Flora was glad of her sisters’ warmth. Carefully she squeezed herself back into position and the scent of the Queen stole up through the slow-breathing Cluster. She waited until she was sure her sisters’ scent covered that of the drone, then a weary peace soaked through her body, and at last she slept.

THE CLUSTER MOVED VERY SLOWLY, the great mass revolving on itself to travel the Treasury walls, and the sisters did not wake, only stirred in their sleep as they shifted their grip on legs and hands, rising or sinking as the Cluster turned. When the great ball shifted again, the smell of honey spiked hunger in Flora’s belly, strong as when she broke out of her emergence chamber. Her whole body felt empty and trembling—and when she saw how far she was from her turn to eat, she wanted to wail in despair. There were maybe another thousand mouths to feed before the turn of the sanitation workers—if they had strength to wait.

Her limbs ached from holding her position, but all around her the other floras slept on, as did the strange new sister she had joined into them. Flora did not want to wake them, but she could not bear to remain like this. She drew in her consciousness and tried to pull shreds of the divine fragrance around her antennae to soothe her impatience. There was not enough and the effort only exacerbated her need for food or escape from this dark, crowded confinement. Other foragers were also awake—she could feel their frustration pulsing through the Cluster. She pushed more energy into her senses—the air had changed and the wood of the hive smelled different. It was drier, and the wind had subsided. Very softly, Flora unhooked herself.