Chapter One A Slumdog’s Long-Awaited Revenge in Three Acts #3
“You hired me as your bookkeeper, not your assistant,” Lythlet continued, enraged.
“It is not my duty to tend to the hives, and never has been. The only reason I’m doing this is because you’ve scared off every single hive-tender you’ve ever hired with your foul temper, and I’m the only one desperate enough to stay on. ”
He turned crimson, his gaze lighting up with rage. “You dare speak to me this way?”
She flinched, already knowing what was coming next.
He balled up the list of streets and lobbed it at her face. Then came the dog-eared copy of The Setgad Dilemma , the hardcover slapping her cheek. Corio Brandolas’s book fell just in time for her to catch sight of Master Winaro’s hand wrapping around the neck of a bottle of rot-softening solution.
She ducked just in time to miss the bottle cracking her skull.
It grazed the top of her head and shattered against the wall instead, and her heart thumped at the near-death sensation.
A rain of glass shards descended upon her, one flicking across her forehead.
Pain spiked, and blood dripped over her eyes.
She sprang to her feet, furious, too outraged to retreat into feeble silence for once, but he fetched an unsterilized scalpel from his tool-roll. Its sharp edge glittered as he held it before her.
“Get out,” he spat, backing her toward the door. “If you ever come back here, I’ll shank your disrespectful throat myself.”
And with that threat came the splinter in her foundation that sent her spiraling down to this moment, out in the streets as a common thief hoping to scrape together enough coins for a debt-collector.
As her memories unspooled, her boots took on the cobblestones with compounding fury, storming through the streets.
Lythlet was still a distance away from the hive-master’s workshop when she halted by a road, spotting a piece to add to her burgeoning revenge plot.
The street was dimly lit, the hives emitting a soft, milky light that indicated neglected colonies.
She dusted her fingers, then latched onto the nearest hive-post. She climbed the length of it, hands and feet moving gracefully, her childhood pastime of scaling bamboo poles reducing a difficult task into pure muscle memory.
At the top, she fiddled with the latch, making short work of the lock with a pick she’d owned from childhood. Then she reached inside the glass case and pulled out the hive.
A gentle, nutty smell filled her nose. As pleasant as it was, hinting of hazels, she had worked long enough at the hive-master’s workshop to know intimately the smell of hive rot. Although not instantaneously perilous to breathe in, prolonged exposure was decidedly unwise.
“Come along, little bumbles,” she sang softly to the bees, landing on the ground with a soft thud.
The lightning-bees buzzed peacefully around the hive she held captive, trailing her as she resumed her route.
Some came to rest on her fingers, illuminating her knuckles, and she stroked their fuzzy, luminous bodies, marveling at how small they were.
So small, yet together their light breathed life into the city even in the darkest night.
She came to a small plot of undeveloped land, weeds overgrown, rubbish scattered in heaps. Children of the slums rarely went to bed early—if they had one at all—and there were a handful playing there, occupying their last hours of the dying night, and she sought to hire one.
One caught her eye.
The boy was young, ten at most, and his short hair stood up in messy tufts, reminiscent of leafy vegetables. He sat by himself, blowing hard against a leaf, trying to make music from it and halfway succeeding.
“Boy, come here,” she said stiffly.
The boy jerked in fright, the leaf fluttering to the ground.
She realized belatedly the error of greeting a child the way she would a dog. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said.
The boy wheeled around on his heels to retreat.
She frantically dug into her pockets and plucked out a coin. “Listen, lad. I have a business proposal. I’ll give you this spira if you hold this hive and ask a man some questions about it. That’s all.”
The boy paused, then looked over his shoulder, a mischievous glint in his eye. “I want a black valir.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she scoffed. “A spira is all a boy your age needs. I’ll give you two spiras and you’ll be grateful. If not, I’m sure one of these other tykes would be happy to accept in your stead.”
After a moment’s thought, the boy relented. “Fine. What must I do?”
She guided the boy to the workshop streets away, sending him in with the stolen hive and instructions to ask as many questions as he could about his family’s hive-lantern.
Do these bees look sick to you, Master? How long would it take to have the rot cleaned out?
How much would it cost? Goodness, that’s an awful lot of money.
Couldn’t you make it a bit cheaper, sir?
Meanwhile, Lythlet went around the back to the side entrance. Slipping her lockpick into the door and making quick work of it, she found the cramped administrative quarters empty as expected.
Somehow, in a single day without her, the quarters had become overwhelmingly messy, reams of ledgers and contracts spread over the tables, glinting tools tossed haphazardly around. She fetched the coin jar Master Winaro kept for change from a drawer.
Cascading clinks rang throughout the small room as she cleared it out with a vengeance, pouring it into her coin pouch.
She tightened the purse strings, but froze, ears pricking up. Steps were clicking close, light and faint but very much there on the other side of the door. Her chest seized with terror, and she bolted into the nearby closet, squeezing into the coat-stuffed nook and shutting the door after her.
Who is it? From murmurs in the distance, she knew the boy was still dutifully unleashing a barrage of questions at Master Winaro, so it couldn’t be them.
The door opened, and footsteps drew closer.
Lythlet pinched her lips tight and gripped the nearest coat. She’d be skinned alive if whoever it was came to collect their coat. Fear sank its claws into her bones, but her mind refused to quieten, curious as to who it might be.
She hunted for any patterns to draw conclusions from. The footsteps—they had been light, almost dainty. Then Lythlet noticed the fabric of the coat she clung to—Master Winaro wore a rough woolen coat, but this was a fine-threaded paletot. It belonged to a lady, small and tailored so.
His wife must have come to help him with the books in my stead .
Outside the closet, drawers were pulled open and slammed shut.
“Nothing ever kept in order around here,” Madame Winaro muttered. “He wasn’t hitting the girl hard enough if she never had the sense to clean up once in a while.”
Lythlet stilled, those words choking her in one single timespun breath.
A minute later, Madame Winaro retrieved what she had come for, and the door shut once more, her footsteps vanishing into the distance.
Lythlet lingered, clutching the paletot tightly, fingertips white from pressure. She pressed her bandaged forehead against it, the soft fabric caressing her skin, her spirit sapped of all strength. It grieved her to think of how meaningless her pain was to these people.
Let me grant you as much mercy as you’ve ever shown me, she swore, rage resurfacing.
She rammed her hands south into the pockets of Madame Winaro’s coat, ripping out the contents by the fistful and shoving them into her own pockets.
She tore out of the closet, out of the hive-master’s workshop, to the end of the street, where stood a small shrine dedicated to Ezrinara, the warden of wisdom and justice.
The effigy of Ezrinara stood forebodingly tall, a stern woman wielding the Fire of Retribution between her palms. Behind her, at the back of the shrine, was the altar to the Sunsmith and the Moonmachinist, cordoned off by a golden chain.
It was considered inappropriate to make prayers directly to the creators of mortalkind, the immortal voyagers of the universe known and unknown, without guidance from a monk learned in the Poetic scriptures, their intricately tattooed backs proclaiming their liturgical mastery.
Unguided prayers could be made to the twelve tutelary wardens instead, each governing specific domains.
There, alone but for Ezrinara’s vigilance, Lythlet pored through everything she’d stolen. Coins, plenty of them—at last, there would be enough to pay the loan shark tomorrow.
But buried under a fistful of coins was a thin silver chain. She had plucked it from Madame Winaro’s coat without noticing what it was. Two ornate silver rings clung to the chain, as did a thin star-shaped pendant with a sapphire center. It was a wedding pendant, clear as daylight.
This is too much, spoke a quiet voice within her. Coins were one thing, but this would have precious sentimental value. The vindictive rage was gone now, and she was alone with the remains of her soul, a feeble, wilted thing.
She turned and stared warily at the manifestation of Ezrinara.
The gaze of her cold stone eyes bade Lythlet be still.
Unbidden, the opening prayer recited before the divine controlling their fate ran through her mind: umera venturi, asigo venturi.
We live according to your whims, we die according to your whims.
She ought to return it. The coins alone would be enough to keep the loan shark happy for the month. Of course, the wedding pendant would pay off an even greater portion of Desil’s debt—but returning it would be the right thing to do.
So spoke Ezrinara, She of Good Counsel, but Lythlet turned her heart away. Madame Winaro may have never raised a hand against her, but neither had she ever lowered her husband’s.
Staring up at the effigy, Lythlet made her case: You cannot condemn me for doing what I must to survive.
You cannot render my life a tragedy, then damn me for fighting to overcome it.
I owe the Winaros nothing. Not a single iota of mercy, not a single iota of guilt.
May they reap thricefold every bit of pain they have ever sown in me , she cursed the workshop, grip tightening over the chain.
Wouldn’t it be poetic justice if she ended her night on three victims, anyway? First the pickpocket, now the two Winaros. A proper Ederi story concluded with three, Lythlet had learned that much from all the storybooks she’d stolen in her youth.
Moments later, the boy caught up with her, hive still in hand.
“Did what you asked, ma’am,” he announced cheerfully. “My fee, if you’d please.”
“Very well, little loan shark. Two spiras, as promised. Run along now. It’s late.”
“What shall I do with the hive?”
“Keep it, if you like.”
“What for? A dying hive’s not worth much,” he said, scrutinizing it.
“Buying a hive’s never the expensive part, maintaining it is.
I doubt I’ll get more than five pennies for it.
Look at all this rot here! I’ll probably get sick if I hold on to this any longer.
These bees are worthless. The sooner they die, the luckier they are. ”
She bristled at him. “How did you wind up such a miser at your age?”
“I was born this way,” said the boy with pride.
“Careful with that now, or come ten years’ time, you’ll wind up like me.”
“You can’t be only ten years older than me,” said the boy, staring in astonishment at her.
She shooed him away with a snarl, but not before snatching the hive.
“Don’t listen to that nasty turnip,” she whispered to the lightning-bees as she stalked away.
One flew up and landed on her knuckle, limning her skin red with its soft moonlight glow, then buzzing happily as she stroked it.
“None of you are worthless. You’re all good, hardworking little bumbles.
If it weren’t for you lot, this city would be wreathed in darkness. ”
But the boy had been right about one thing: white rot was gathering at the base of the hive, the nutty smell faint. The bees would die soon if the hive wasn’t tended to.
All it would take was Governor Matheranos signing a directive to have the lamps of that street serviced, but he was a man sitting in the safety of his well-lit chancery, blissfully unaware of the quiet suffering beyond his walls, signing edict after edict that seemed to benefit only people of his ilk and never hers.
Rare was such a man who cared for small lives.
She returned to the street she’d stolen the colony from, lowering it back into the glass cage of the hive-post.
“I hope you all live a long time,” she whispered as the bees swirled around in lumbering circles.
She clung to the hive-post longer than she intended, watching the bees, feeling a strange sort of sorrow, a strange sort of camaraderie.
It was in the days of her deep-buried bittersweet childhood when she had come to the conclusion that slumdogs like her had more in common with the lives of insects than the rich.
As thrilling as the night had been, taking revenge on the Winaros and getting enough money to pay off Tucoras at dawn, a deep melancholia filled Lythlet then.
My little adventure as a protagonist has come to an end now , she thought as the bees flitted over her fingers, and it’s time to return to the margins where I belong.