Before Qinnitan could seize this chance to ask the revered and mysterious Mistress Chryssa some questions about her childhood before the temple, the nets in front of the hives billowed a little in a sudden draft, although the weight of hundreds of bees clinging to them kept them from moving too much. The breeze carried something through the great room, a whisper of sudden fear and excitement that made both the chief acolyte and her young charges straighten and turn to the door where the High Priestess had suddenly appeared, her arms held up, her hands open in the air like flowers.
“Praises to the highest,” breathed Chryssa, “He is here!”
Qinnitan got down on her knees beside the chief acolyte. A murmur of footsteps became louder, swishing and booming on the polished stone floors, as soldiers began to file in, each with a great curved sword on his belt and bearing on his shoulder a long, bell-mouthed tube of brightly polished figured steel—the Autarch’s Leopards, they had to be, no one else was allowed to wear that black-and-gold armor. It was astonishing she had never thought to see any men here in the Hive’s great portico, let alone a hundred of them with muskets. This rarity was followed by several dozen robed priests of Nushash, then an even larger troop of soldiers, these carrying more conventional but still frightening weapons, long spears and swords. At last the shuffling of feet stopped. Qinnitan sneaked a look over at Mistress Chryssa, whose face was radiant with excitement and something even stronger—a sort of joy.
A vast litter appeared in the doorway, a thing of gold-painted wood and heavy curtains embroidered with the wide-winged falcon of the royal family. The brawny soldiers who held it set the litter down just to the side of the doorway and one of them leaped forward to pull back the curtains. Although none of the women in the temple chamber said a word, Qinni-tan thought she could feel them, dozens of them, all drawing breath at the same time. A face appeared from the shadows in the depths of the litter, picked out by the lanterns.
Qinnitan swallowed, although for a moment it seemed impossible to do so. The autarch was a monster.
No, not quite a monster she saw at her second glance, but the youth in the litter was bent and gnarled as though by extreme age and his head was far too large for his spindly body. He blinked and looked absently from side to side like a sleepy man realizing he has opened the wrong door, then withdrew into the darkness of his curtained bower once more.
Even as Qinnitan gaped, the Leopard guards all lifted their guns off their shoulders, held them high, then slammed their feet against the floor with a deafening report—boom, boom ! For a moment she thought the guns had all gone off, and some of the Hive Sisters let out shrieks of fear and dismay. As the echoes died, a half dozen more men in black-and-gold armor appeared in the doorway and then a figure almost as strange as the one in the litter followed them into the temple room.
He was tall, half a head above the biggest of the Leopards, but not as freakishly so as he first appeared it was the length of his neck and the narrowness of his face that made him seem so unusual, and the spidery stretch of his fingers as he raised his hand. Beneath the high, dome-shaped crown his face, too, seemed like an ordinary face that had been pulled a bit beyond its appropriate shape—a long jaw and a curved, bony nose like a hawk’s beak that matched oddly with his youth—smooth brown flesh stretched tight across the skull. He wore a small trimmed black beard and his eyes seemed unnaturally large and bright as he stared around the room. A few of the Nushash priests stepped forward and began chanting and swinging their censers, filling the air around the tall young man with smoke.
“Who is that?” Qinnitan whispered under cover of the priests’ noise.
Chryssa was clearly shocked that she should dare to whisper, even when it was more or less safe to do so under the cover of the priests’ voices. “The autarch, you fool girl!”
It certainly made more sense that the tall one was their ruler—he had an undeniable power to him. “But then who is that… who is the man in the litter?”
“The scotarch, of course—his heir. Now be silent.”
Qinnitan felt stupid. Her father had once told her that the scotarch, the autarch’s ceremonial heir, was sickly, but she had entirely forgotten, and had certainly never guessed him to be so obviously afflicted. Still, considering that the autarch’s own life and rule hinged on the health and continued well-being of the scotarch, by ancient Xixian tradition, Qinnitan couldn’t help wondering at the autarch’s choice of such a frail reed.
It didn’t matter, she reminded herself. These folk were as much above her—all the doings of the high house were as far above her—as the stars in the sky.
“Where is the mistress of this temple?” The autarch’s voice was high-pitched but strong; it rang in the great room like a silvery bell.
Eminence Rugan came forward, head bowed, her usual brisk walk transformed almost into the slinking of a frightened beast. That, more than the soldiers or priests or anything else, made Qinnitan understand that she was in the presence of matchless, terrifying power: Rugan bowed to no one else that Qinnitan had ever seen. “Your glory reflects on us all, O Master of the Great Tent,” Rugan said, voice quavering a little. “The Hive welcomes you and the bees are gladsome in your presence. Mother Mudry is coming to offer you any wisdom the Sacred Bees of Nushash can grant. She begs your generous indulgence, Golden One. She is too old to wait here in the drafty outer temple without great discomfort.”
The look that crossed the autarch’s corvine features was almost a smirk. “She does me too much honor, does old Mudry. You see, I haven’t come to consult the oracle. I want nothing from the bees.”
Even cowed by the presence of a hundred armed soldiers, many Sisters of the Hive couldn’t restrain a gasp of surprise—some of the noises even sounded suspiciously like disapproval. Come to the temple and not consult the sacred bees?
“I’m… I’m afraid I don’t understand, O Golden One.” Clearly confused, Eminence Rugan took a step back, then sank to one knee. “The high priest’s messenger said you wished to come to the Hive because you were searching for something…”
The autarch actually laughed. It had a strange edge to it, something that made Qinnitan’s flesh prickle on her arms. The curtain of the scotarch’s litter twitched as though the sick young man was peering out. “Yes, he did,” the autarch said. “And I am. Come, Panhyssir, where are you?”
A bulky shape in dark robes with a long, narrow beard like a gray waterfall trundled out from behind the Leopard guards—Panhyssir, the high priest of Nushash, Qinnitan guessed, and thus another of the most powerful people in the entire continent of Xand. He looked as fat and unconcerned with trivial human things as one of the drones in the sacred hives. “Yes, Golden One?”
“You said that this was the place I would find the bride I sought.”
Panhyssir didn’t look anywhere near as worried as the Hive priestesses; he had already overseen the collection of hundreds of brides for the autarch, so perhaps this seemed a bit routine. “She is definitely here, Golden One. We know that.”
“Ah, is she, now? Then I will find her myself.” The autarch took a few steps, his eyes sweeping along the rows of kneeling, terrified Hive Sisters. Qinnitan had no better an idea of what was going on than any of her comrades, but she saw the autarch and his Leopards moving across the temple toward them and so she turned her face toward the floor and tried to stay as still as the paving stones.
“This is the one,” said the autarch from somewhere nearby.