“No!” she screamed. “Not Holy Mother!”

The priestesses pulled her back. The police raised a harsh veil of their own scent before them and smashed open the Queen’s doors.

Every bee stopped on the threshold. The fertility police buzzed their alarms but did not move. The priestesses uttered one cry. Flora’s antennae stood rigid as the full horror drove into her brain.

Spilled goblets and broken cakes lay scattered on the comb and Her Majesty the Queen sat amid them, her lace mantle of wings spread all around covering her body. Her face was as beautiful as ever, but her scent had changed. Coiling through the divine fragrance of her Love, air worms of the malign odor grew stronger with every pulse of her heart.

Disheveled and wide-eyed with fear, the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting reached out to the fertility police. Their wings curled shriveled on their backs like dead half-eaten things, and when they tried to speak no sound came out, for their tongues had turned to slime.

“Who comes to us so rudely?” The Queen lifted her head and scanned the chamber. “Who would disturb us in our labors?” As she rearranged her mantle they all saw the dead baby cradled in her arms.

“No, Mother—” Flora wanted to run to her but the fertility police held her firm.

The Queen turned her sightless eyes in Flora’s direction. “Let our daughter come.”

“Forgive us, Your Majesty, but it is you who must now come to your daughters.” The priestesses knelt.

“But we are nursing our child.”

Through the foul odor, a trace of pure Devotion rose from the Queen’s body, and carried the beauty of her voice. Every bee in the chamber yearned toward it.

“Forgive me, Mother,” Flora sobbed.

The Queen turned her blind head.

“Darling child,” she said, “hush your tears.” She beckoned to where her ladies lay, and one of them crawled toward her, her kin-scent devoured by her sickness. “Take our new son,” said the Queen. “Take him back to the Nursery.” As she passed the dead baby it fell apart, and the lady-in-waiting moaned in horror.

“Come, Majesty,” said the Sage priestesses. “We must go at once.” They threw out a cordon of their powerful astringent scent, and the Queen rose and walked through it toward the big carved doors. Her ladies began to crawl after her, but the fertility police blocked them.

“Forgive us.” They twisted each one’s head from her thorax. Then they turned to Flora. “Come.”

Every task was halted as the Hive Mind summoned all sisters. The passageways were filled with silent bees hurrying to the Dance Hall, crystals of propolis, flakes of fresh wax, or half-chewed pollen dough clinging to their fur. Marching within her escort of fertility police, Flora saw some of her own kin throw her agonized looks of fear.

As they went into the Dance Hall the bees coughed at the great wall of masking scent in the center of the floor, then fell silent at the sight of the Queen behind it. Her mantle glowed bright through the strange energy waves coiling around her, and pure threads of her divine fragrance still rose above it all. She smiled at them, and even through their fear, each bee felt her Mother’s Love embrace her. Then the Hive Mind spoke.

Behold the sacred Rule of Law.

A whole fresh leaf was carried in by more of the fertility police, and on it was a thick gold layer of forsythia pollen. By the sheen of each grain, it was clear that it had been prepared the day before, and the foragers sought each other’s eyes in silent question, for none had been part of this.

Flora alone knew it. The Golden Leaf. The fifth story in the Queen’s Library. The flickering fear in her belly hardened into a tight knot as from the back of the chamber, the Sage priestesses walked forward.

At their approach the Queen lifted her wings and the bees murmured in relief and awe, for at first they shone bright—but then ragged spots of darkness appeared in them as the sickness crawled upon her. As the Queen’s wings began to disappear, the Sage priestesses made a crescent around her, and the bees began to weep.

The Queen raised her blind head.

“By what power am I called hither?” Her beautiful voice was unchanged. “I would know by what authority, I mean lawful.”

Then the Hive Mind spoke.

THE QUEEN SICKENS.

All the priestesses knelt, and all the bees in the chamber and those listening motionless throughout the hive did the same. The Queen alone stood firm.

“But our Love still shines—”

“Holy Mother, sovereign of our hive, forgive us,” intoned one priestess, her voice transmitting through every cell of the comb, “for it is our most grave and somber duty to announce your reign has ended.”

“Ended?” The Queen laughed, and held her belly. “How can that be, when I hold the future of our hive? Within me are eggs for countless generations.”

“And each one tainted by the sickness you bear, which spreads affliction through our home. We have found it out; it is confirmed. Let the witness be called.”

Police officers pushed Flora forward. The Queen drew in her scent.

“My reading daughter. . . . Are we in my Library?”

“Forgive me, Mother,” Flora sobbed. “I have betrayed you—”

“Ah . . .” The Queen turned her antennae toward the pollen-coated leaf. “Now I remember . . . we come to the fifth story. And I to death, for I know how it ends.” Then her face shone and light glowed back into her magnificent wings. “Let all my children come to me—”

“No. It is time.” The Sage spoke together.

“But I wish to bless my daughters—I am Immortal Holy Mother—”

“You were.” The Sage signaled and the fertility police seized the Queen and forced her to her knees. “Your reign has ended.”

Every sister felt a terrible tearing pain inside her, yet could not look away as the police dragged the Queen’s mantle from her body. She did not protest, even at the long, high ripping sound of the beautiful membranes tearing. Sister Inspector stepped forward, her huge claw ready.

“Not you.” The Queen’s voice carried on the still air. “Let it be a noble Thistle.”

All eyes in the chamber went to the priestesses. They were utterly still. Then Sister Sage beckoned back Sister Inspector. She pointed to a large Thistle at the front.

“You.”

Stricken, the Thistle shook her head. “I—I cannot. I cannot!”

The Queen nodded. “Bravely now, daughter,” she said. “If ever you have loved me.”

The Thistle stepped forward, and every sister’s body clenched in terror at her task. The Queen stretched out her ragged wings and bent her head.

“I forgive you. Quick, belov—”

With one blow, the Thistle struck the Queen’s head from her body. It rolled on the comb and lay still. Its beautiful blind eyes gazed up at the vaulted ceiling, and blood seeped from her severed thorax. The Thistle stepped back, unable to believe what she had done. Flora’s belly drew so tight she could not breathe.

The silence in the Dance Hall tightened around the bees until they choked, and the scent of the Queen’s blood rose up around them. Then as one they shrieked and wailed their agony and rent their wings.

What have we done! sobbed the Hive Mind. We have murdered Mother! What have we done!

They rushed to the Queen’s body and beat their antennae on the comb in their anguish, and many tore their own fur out in clumps. Alarm glands flooded across the thundering comb, the air throbbed with the Queen’s Love and the scent of her blood, and every priestess was surrounded by a wall of convulsing bees.

Flora too ran through the crowd screaming her agony, for each bee had watched the act without resistance, and each felt guilty. Only the Thistle executioner stood rigid in shock—and the fertility police, standing behind the patient priestesses.

Gradually the comb stopped drumming, and the Hive Mind sank dazed and exhausted back into the bodies of the bees. Flora raised her antennae. The odor of sickness was gone. Other bees began to know it too, standing to scent the changed air. It was clean, and it filled with kin-scent of the Sage. A priestess stepped forward.