39: Rest and Relaxation

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The Hiveless think that Tyk is one of them. And for a moment, she considers the option of letting them continue to think that. They certainly seem inclined to help her, and that could change if they find out she has a hive.

But no; it’s too dangerous. If she tries to deceive them and gets found out, that’ll be much worse. Best to clear everything up immediately.

“I’m not Hiveless.”

“Of course not,” Saima says in the tone of somebody responding to a little kid insisting that they’re gonna be on the Hiveheart someday. “But we can sort that out after everyone’s had a good long rest, right? It is the middle of the night.”

The state of the hive entrance looks even worse up close. Logically, Tyk knows that these places eventually collapse – the continent would be littered with ancient hive entrances if they didn’t – but it’s still shocking to see. Part of the entrance itself is collapsed, leaving barely enough space for the largest of the group (Samet) to scrape her way past. The end of the entrance tunnel is completely collapsed; Tyk doesn’t want to think about that the entrance hall behind it must look like. The space where the Hiveless seem to be living is the front storerooms, where an active hive would store goods that are used aboveground.

The sky people seem to have a storeroom to themselves, and invite Smon in, but she waves them off and goes back to Tyk. Tyk is relieved; she has no desire to sleep alone, and even less desire to sleep alone with these strangers. She and Smon set themselves up in a storeroom that’s still being used as a storeroom, and to Tyk’s surprise, nobody objects. She supposes that the Hiveless all know that she wouldn’t dare to steal from them.

They don’t have much, as is expected. Some dried out fruits and surface-level tubers. None of the sweetroot or farmed moss that makes up the bulk of a hive’s diet; that takes organisation, and stability, and most importantly a great many people, to farm. Their non-food storage mostly seems to consist of cordage and fabric woven from plants; no communication tower, obviously, so no silk farms. Very little bamboo, and what there is, is poor quality. The fact that they’re storing cordage and bamboo at all is interesting; like the ramshackle repairs on the hive entrance, they suggest that this group live here permanently, or at the very least semi-permanently. They might travel from old hive to old hive like traders moving between burrows on trade routes, picking an area clean and moving on. That would make sense. Why move around before you have to? It doesn’t sound like a safe or stable way to live, and Tyk has to remind herself that these are dangerous criminals who deserve their fate, and she shouldn’t pity them.

Smon falls fast asleep next to her, more relaxed than she’s been since they left the Redstone River Hive, and Tyk is surprised to realise that she, too, feels safer here among these renegades than at Green Hills.

In the morning, Tyk wanders out of the burrow only to learn that the hive entrance, while not in great condition, actually isn’t collapsing. Stones and dirt have been piled up to half-block it intentionally. This is made obvious by the fact that it’s now almost completely blocked, with a small hole left for ventilation that a man would barely be able to squeeze through, and Saima is looking out of the hole with the general manner of a guard. (Keima, Tyk notes, is still not present – he must have guard duty outside the hive.)

The logic of the blocked doorway is obvious; it must be for the same reason that the sky people’s eggs can close up and not be opened again by those who don’t know how. This is to prevent other Hiveless from sneaking into the burrow at night to attack or steal from the group. Tyk has never seen such a thing done before, but she’s learned about wars; hives will do this sort of thing to protect against other hives in wartime. It that what being Hiveless is like? Being constantly at war?

“Tyk!” Saima’s voice is all warmth and welcome. She certainly doesn’t sound like she’s wary of an attack. “You’re up early! Did you sleep alright?”

It’s at this point that Tyk realises that the sun is only barely climbing over the horizon. “Yes. I’m just… I’ve been on a strange schedule, with the travelling.”

“Well, you’re safe now.”

“Thank you,” she says. “For all of your help.”

“Someone’s got to help. It’s because of Smon, isn’t it?”

“W-what?”

“The reason you’re out here.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“Thought so. A girl wandering the sleeplands all alone with one of the star-sailors? There’s not many reasons why something like that would happen. So the hives aren’t too accepting of our visitors, huh?”

“No! I mean, they are. Except the ones that aren’t. It’s… look, I wasn’t exiled.”

“Heartroot, I – ”

“I’m not in denial. I’m telling the truth. I’m from the Redstone River Hive – I’m of the Redstone River Hive. The reason we’re out here is because of Green Hills. We were supposed to take Smon to Glittergem, which meant going through Green Hills, and Green Hills are scared of the sky people and tried to kill her. There was supposed to be a caravan, but we… got separated from everyone.”

“And pushed on alone? Through the sleeplands?”

“I couldn’t take Smon back to Green Hills. I couldn’t let them know she was still alive, and there wasn’t really a way to get a caravan across under their mandibles. We had to take the best option that we had.”

“Things must be rough if this was your best option,” someone says from behind her. Kebin. He lands on her and starts cleaning the back of her horns, which is a pretty familiar gesture from a total stranger, but Tyk figures that she probably looks awful, having been away from men for so long. “Why do you need to get to Glittergem? Surely Redstone River would be safer.”

“That was my thought, too, but here we are,” Tyk grumbles.

“Ah,” Kebin says. “Star-sailor stubbornness. They do seem to be like that.” He doesn’t push the question about their purpose, which Tyk is glad about.

“Good morning, Tyk!” Sakeya’s voice is boistrous enough to echo around the narrow tunnel as she strides out of a chamber, Kekeya already on her horns. “Ready for breakfast? I’ll show you how to gather it properly.”

“I know how to harvest plants,” Tyk points out.

“Oh, I’m sure you know how to grab a few flowers to add variety to your hive diet. But that kind of one-horn work won’t keep you alive long out here. I’ll show you how to do it properly.”

“She’s not in exile,” Saima says. “From Redstone River, apparently. Got cut off at the Green Hills crossing. There’s Politics.”

“Ugh, politics. Not war, I hope?”

“Between Green Hills and Redstone River?”

“Fuck them, they can kill each other off for all I care. War with the star-sailors. That could be a problem.”

Tyk remembers Smon’s killing tool. If the sky people, as a group, were under attack, their existence threatened…

“I don’t think that’s likely,” Tyk says. “Most of the hives seemed generally supportive of the sky people, although I guess it’s possible that they’re like Green Hills and either lying or changed their minds. After the Green Hills thing, Redstone River would’ve sent messengers to the other hives with sky people, to warn them. There was probably a lot of panic when the wingsong stream stopped working – ”

“I’m sorry, the wingsong stream stopped working?”

“Temporarily, they’re pretty sure. Something about the sky boats falling changed the air currents for a while. Last I heard, it was expected to recover pretty soon. It might be back up already, for all I know. Anyway, I don’t think we can expect war; the hives friendly to the sky people just won’t take any sky people they’re looking after to hives that are dangerous.”

“What about revenge against any hives that have killed them already?”

“I don’t think that’s a problem,” Smon says from the doorway to their storeroom. “We’re trying to gather together and survive, and we won’t have time or resources for revenge. The dead are already dead. When our hive is together, they might try to demand resources in payment for lives taken, to use to help us survive. The hives will either pay or they won’t.”

“And if they don’t?”

She shrugs. “Then they don’t. What can we do about it? We’ll be trying to build a home to live, we won’t be able to go travelling around the continent starting stupid wars. By the time we could do that sort of thing, it will be generations later, and the dead a distant memory. Maybe our descendants will use the deaths as an excuse if they have other reasons to make war, but it won’t cause any fighting in itself.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Saima says. “I can’t imagine the damage that your people could do in war.”

Smon shrugs again. “Not much, probably. Hives are big and organised and live underground. We are not good at moving about underground. Most of our killing tools are made from things we can’t find here; they can’t be repaired, more can’t be made. What should we do, find some way to drag our magic heat stones halfway across the continent to a hive we don’t like, find some way to sneak them inside to destroy it, hurt the land for generations and generations and then our lives are harder because we have no magic heat stones any more? We can defend ourselves,” she adds, indicating the killing tool at her waist (apparently no hesitation in showing that to these murderous strangers, okay yeah, fine), “but that just means that other hives will have trouble attacking our hive, same as we can’t really attack theirs. And nobody attacking each others’ hives is good.”

“That’s true enough,” Sakeya says. “Anyway, how about we go and get that breakfast?”

It’s probably safe, Tyk reasons, to follow Sakeya out of the burrow. It’s not like the Hiveless are any more dangerous out there than in here – less, in fact, since she can try to run away from Sakeya out in the open, whereas here she’s surrounded underground. Still, no sense in getting separated if they can help it. “Smon, do you want to come?”

Smon shakes her head. “I am busy, sorry. I have to go to the drop boat.”

Dem and her companions’ drop boat? “Why?”

“To have the echo stone talk to it. With Rayjo. If I die, all the things that the echo stone has seen and heard will be lost. I give my knowledge to the drop boat, and my echo stone learns what the drop boat knows. Safer for everyone.”

“On. Uh. Well…”

“There’s some darkroot out that way that should be just about mature,” Saima says. “Sakeya, why don’t you take Tyk and Tama harvesting out towards the drop boat? Not too close to the reservoir, now.”

“Yeah, yeah; we’ll be careful of the reservoir,” Sakeya says. “Hey! Tama! You up?”

“Whaaaat?” comes a voice from a storage room.

“Food gathering time! Come on!”

“It’s still the middle of the night!”

“The sun is well and truly up, heartroot,” Saima says.

“Argh, fine, I’m coming.”

So Saima digs out the tunnel opening and Sakeya, Tyk, Tama, and four sky people walk out into the sunlight.

It’s easier to tell the sky people apart in the daylight. They all look basically like Smon, with slight differences in height and shape, but their silks are a little different, rendering them distinguishable. All three of the strangers are wrapped in silks in significantly better condition than Smon’s, having not trekked through mud and rain and a rapid river in them, and have them wrapped in different styles; Dem wears many layers, and the person to her left wears fewer layers of much flappier silks, letting them trail from her limbs and dangle from her waist in a sheet. The sky person to Dem’s right is most interesting, as she appears not only to be wearing fabric, but have thousands of fine strands of loose silk threads affixed to her head, starting above the eyes and covering the entire back behind the ears. It’s not clear how they’re affixed; perhaps glued down, like gemstones on a carapace? That would make sense, given how fixated these sky people are on their silks; maybe these threads are a symbol of value and craft and denote her status and achievement. Her name, Tyk learns, is Kana, and the one in looser silks is Yotoru.

They head out towards something strange glimmering in the distance, and Sakeya demonstrates surprising skill in finding and harvesting plants and bugs. She shows Tyk how to catch the little rootgrubs, and how to tell when redstalks are at their sweetest, and a new way to replant yams to ensure they’ll grow back faster. Tyk, despite herself, is interested, and barely notices when the drop boat, and the glimmering thing behind it, come into view.

It’s water. A large expanse of water, like a huge puddle. No, not a puddle – it’s something built; Tyk can see the sides constructed of half-fired clay.

“The reservoir,” Tama explains, disinterested. “Don’t harvest too close to it, just in case.”

The water, for some reason, is incredibly green.

So they have a way of storing water for their little group; that would make sense, this far from the river. Hopefully they can filter the green stuff out of it. Much more interesting is the drop boat, which Smon –

Which Smon isn’t even looking at. She’s staring at the reservoir.

She asks Dem a question. Dem answers. She asks Kana a shorter, terser question, which Tana answers dismissively.

Then Smon curls her claw into a small, hard ball, swings it, and hits Kana square in the face.

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