The Queen Is a Beekeeper

How it begins

Nadia Ames had learned to remove a crown without disturbing her hair. She had not yet learned to remove a bee from a crown without looking ridiculous.

'Hold still,' Leila Nasser said.

The queen held still. She had commanded armies with less effort. The bee explored the sapphire above her forehead, apparently disappointed by the absence of pollen. Leila offered it a sprig of thyme, and it climbed aboard with the deliberate dignity of a visiting ambassador.

'It prefers you,' Nadia said.

'It prefers flowers. An admirable political position.'

Beyond the kitchen garden, the palace was waking. Someone would soon find the folded dressing gown on Nadia's bed and begin the discreet panic reserved for missing sovereigns. Here, behind the compost wall, she wore an old shirt and a veil that smelled of sun-warmed linen. Her hands were sticky. For twenty minutes she had belonged entirely to herself.

Leila lifted the first frame from the hive. Honey glowed in its cells, darker than yesterday, with an unexpected blue shine. A drop fell onto Nadia's wrist. She tasted it before remembering the gardener's rule about unexplained changes.

The garden vanished.

She stood in her council chamber, listening to the finance minister propose another winter levy. Across the table, his mouth said necessary. Behind his ribs, something small and frightened said my brother will lose the farm.

Then the thyme returned. Nadia caught the wall.

Leila set the frame down very gently. 'Your Majesty?'

'Nadia,' she said automatically. It was their garden rule. No titles among things that grew.

She described the minister's hidden voice. Leila looked toward the palace, then toward the hive. Her expression closed a little. Nadia disliked how quickly she wanted to know why.

'We should stop harvesting,' Leila said.

'It could prevent a war.'

'It could.' Leila wiped the honey from the queen's wrist with a clean corner of cloth. 'It could also take something from a person they never offered us.'