Chapter Twenty-Six The Bee’s Gold #2
Her tone was sober as she continued, “But there is a reason why it fell into disuse. It soon became clear it was a poison upon extended exposure. As with hive-rot, a brief encounter will do little, if anything at all. But drawn out over years, golden rot will remain in you and eat away at your insides. Your cough is but the beginning of much worse.”
“How do you know all this?” he asked, alarmed.
“I worked for nearly a year at a hive-master’s workshop,” she answered.
“Though I served as his bookkeeper, I had little choice but to help with his operations, too. He would always stress the importance of the safe disposal of hive-rot to avoid it festering into golden rot. I would wear a shroud to cover my nose and mouth at all times, as did he. I imagine those hiring you did not bother providing you with any.”
“No,” he spluttered. “They never gave us nothing to protect ourselves.”
She nodded, as calmly as she could to avoid adding to his panic, though her insides roiled with rage. “I didn’t think so.”
“But Master-Builder Asa himself plans to live in one of the flats we construct,” he argued. “Surely they wouldn’t lace the walls with something so poisonous?”
“Once mixed in and hardened, it is benign. It will not affect the residents, only those who handle it while it remains dust.”
His brows furrowed, and skepticism colored his words. “Lythlet, this is ridiculous. They’ve paid us so well. Why would they be so generous if they plan to kill us?”
For once, his doubt did not hurt her. He was a man clinging to hope, and hope often came in the defiance of truth.
“Because what they’ve given you may seem generous, but it’s only a fraction of the profit they will reap in the end.
They give you a black valir for a fortnight of labor, and you rejoice, but they have a vault of gold coins in their homes.
And their bigger promise lies at the end, does it not?
Haven’t they promised to aid in the repayment of any debt you hold should you work for them until the end of the construction? ”
His face fell. “But you’re saying we’ll most likely die before we can claim it.”
She nodded. “They know the sum of what they’ve promised, and they have structured it so they will never have to honor it.
They prey upon the unregistered for this scheme, knowing you’re desperate for employment, but also have no access to the health wards above Inejio.
You will grow sicker as the months go by, with no chance to visit a physic and learn the truth. ”
“No one would do something as monstrous as this—”
“Father,” she said delicately but firmly, “the riverside flats are the first step in a plan to gentrify Inejio Setgad into an exclusive haven for the wealthy. The highborn would never accept the unregistered as their neighbors. You know this. Even the mere idea of the unregistered darkening their doorsteps would inevitably lower the value of these flats. I have spent my life working amongst merchants of all sorts, and this is exactly how the master-builder and his investors think. But they cannot have you fleeing elsewhere, aboveground. So they hire you to labor on their flats, which completion will be long enough for you to take a deadly rot within your flesh, and you will die in time for them to sell them.”
She turned to the other four, all listening with dismayed faces, and said, “You must tell as many of the unregistereds as you can before it’s too late. They must know they’re being sacrificed for highborn luxuries.”
Anger had reignited in her, fueling her thoughts, but she halted as she turned back. Tears were springing forth from Father’s dark eyes.
It was easy to get carried away upon a tide of rage. But it was better, she decided, to stay with a person and their grief. Wrath serves oneself, mercy serves others. She softened, crouching to his level. “Father, I’m sorry.”
He buried his face in his palms, bloated joints and wrinkled knuckles hiding him. “I am a fool as ever. I thought I’d finally found an opportunity to free myself from my debts and return us to a proper life aboveground, but now you tell me I’ve made yet another fool’s choice.”
Lythlet reached out and held his hands, the tightrope shrinking into vanishment.
“You are not a fool for wanting the chance to better yourself. You are not a fool for trusting the word of folk who have branded themselves as wiser and more accomplished than you. These highborn masterminds are cunning grifters, and they know how to lead you to your own demise, all while ensuring you never have a chance to look at the map they alone hold in their hands.”
Father groaned, pushing her hands away and withdrawing into himself.
“I’ve done nothing but stumble from mistake to mistake.
Perhaps my greatest mistake was marrying your mother and bringing you into this world, that the two of you would be damned to a life with a fool of a husband and a father.
Had I known better, I never would have had you. ”
A tremble spread from Lythlet’s fingers, and the tightrope remanifested into a whip lashing her throat.
“Never say that again,” she said in a shattered voice.
“Not to yourself, and never to Mother for she will not understand until it’s too late that it’s not her existence that burdens you.
” She wanted to say, and never to me again, because I won’t forgive you twice , but she knew she’d never be able to get those words out coherently.
A warm hand fell upon her shoulder. She knew it to be Desil’s, but she looked away, ashamed of her outburst.
She took a deep, heaving breath, and spoke once more in an even tone.
“Mother needs you. She needs you to be whole of mind and spirit. She has always loved you, and so long as you love her, she won’t weigh your worth by any other measure.
Don’t think yourself a failure for struggling to find an easy path in a hard world.
” Her voice had shattered again midway, but she was determined to guide her father down a road he might not have known existed.
Desil’s hand had squeezed tighter in encouragement when she faltered, but now he released it, and she turned to catch his gentle gaze upon her. She looked away, uncomfortable at how vulnerable she’d made herself before an audience.
Father stared. He seemed to know the weight of her plea, to intuit the words stemmed from a wounded heart. “Is it too late for me?”
“How long since you began work at the flats?”
“Five months.”
“There is still hope. From my learning under the hive-master, a cough may continue for years, but you won’t go the way of the white wind as long as you stop further exposure to the golden rot.”
He sat quietly, and she sensed a reluctance in his silence.
She knelt before him, knees pressing into the wooden floorboards.
“If you are as I am, you’re thinking that you may as well carry on since you’ve come this far.
Earn what wages you can, give it to Mother, and hold out as long as possible so they’re forced to pay your debts before you succumb to the golden rot.
But Father, your life is worth more than that.
You must live for Mother, and more importantly, for yourself. ”
He hid his face behind one broad palm, until all she could see were tears dripping from his fingers.
“I am sorry,” she said once more, lost for clever words.