the screaming began.
Idaan's composure broke, and she leaned forward. The men at the tables
nearest the thing waved their arms and fled, shrieking and pounding at
the air. Voices buzzed and a cloud of pale, moving smoke rose toward the
galleries.
No. The buzzing was not voices, the cloud was not smoke. These were
wasps. The bundle on the council floor had been a nest wrapped in cloth
and wax. The first of the insects buzzed past her, a glimpse of black
and yellow. She turned and ran.
Bodies filled the corridors, panic pressing them together until there
was no air, no space. People screamed and cursed-men, women, children.
"Their shrill voices mixed with the angry buzz. She was pushed from all
sides. An elbow dug into her back. The surge of the crowd pressed the
breath from her. She was suffocating, and insects filled the air above
her. Idaan felt something bite the flesh at the back of her neck like a
hot iron burning her. She screamed and tried to reach back to hat the
thing away, but there was no room to move her arm, no air. She lashed
out at whoever, whatever was near. The crowd was a single, huge, biting
beast and Idaan flailed and shrieked, her mind lost to fear and pain and
confusion.
Stepping into the open air of the street was like waking from a
nightmare. The bodies around her thinned, becoming only themselves
again. The fierce buzz of tiny wings was gone, the cries of pain and
terror replaced by the groans of the stung. People were still streaming
out of the palace, arms flapping, but others were sitting on benches or
else the ground. Servants and slaves were rushing about, tending to the
hurt and the humiliated. Idaan felt the back of her neck-three angry
humps were already forming.
"It's a poor omen," a man in the red robes of the needle wrights said.
"Something more's going on than meets the eye if someone's willing to
attack the council to keep old Kamau from talking."
"What could he have said?" the man's companion asked.
"I don't know, but you can be sure whatever it was, he'll be saying
something else tomorrow. Someone wanted him stopped. Unless this is
about Adrah Vaunyogi. It could be that someone wants him closed down."
"Then why loose the things when his critics were about to speak?"
"Good point. Perhaps ..."
Idaan moved on down the street. It was like the aftermath of some
gentle, bloodless battle. People bound bruised limbs. Slaves brought
plasters to suck out the wasps' venom. But already, all down the wide
street, the talk had turned back to the business of the council.
Her neck was burning now, but she pushed the pain aside. There would he
no decision made today. That was clear. Kaman or Vaunani had disrupted
the proceedings to get more time. It had to be that. It couldn't he
more, except that of course it could. The fear was different now, deeper
and more complex. Almost like nausea.
Adrah was leaning against the wall at the mouth of an alleyway. His
father was sitting beside him, a serving girl dabbing white paste on the
angry welts that covered his arms and face. Idaan went to her husband.