Page 6 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

Up ahead, a stand of trees stood near the road, although to call it a road was generous. It was more of a sad, skinny path. The ground was wet. The rain had kindly buggered off before we’d made it here; it was still darking up down south, but no longer threatening us. Ahead there was even a little blue trying to scratch its way clear, and it seemed just that bit less cold. Not enough to make me take my marmoset hat off, mind.

Our reprieve felt fragile.

Bees again.

More of them.

They zubbed and zoooed drowsily before my eyes, or lit on an arm, but these were some kind of docile honeybees. Not the kind they had in South Ispanthia and Urrimad, that sailors said would hound you into the water and wait for you to poke your head back up, overjoyed to tear their guts out at the end of the stinger just to hear you howl. Kynd had died of stings, it was said, and that’s an embarrassing, sad way to go, isn’t it? What happened to Kinch? Oh, didn’t ya hear? Bunch a bugs murdered him for stealing honey. It wasn’t like a spider or snake biting you and you die. That’s just a misunderstanding. Swarm of bees killing you, that’s democratic. They voted you down like a guild. “Shall we kill this geezer? Aye, it’s unanimous! Fuck him!” But these weren’t furious southern bees. These were gentle, curious, sleepy with cold, and they gladdened my heart. Though I grant they looked off from the honeybees I’d seen before.

“Thanks for the honey, friends,” I said, even as one took interest in my fingers, no doubt because they still smelled of nectar. Another started zumming about my lips. “That’s all right,” I said, “we’re all mates here.”

“Is late,” Worrig said. “They want back honey, eat for winter. Soon stay in hive.”

“Well, I paid for it,” I said.

We were nearing the stand of trees Worrig had pointed out before, and now I could make out shapes in the branches. Their hives, no doubt. And big ones, too.

But I got a better look at those hives as we came closer, and I couldn’t much believe my eyes. At first, I thought they were shaped like big, rolled-up rugs. But then I saw a leg. Then a hand. Then a bit of hairy skull. These bees made hives in corpses, for Fothannon’s sake. I remembered that hair I’d found.

“Awww, you’re not fucking serious, right?” I said to the tree line, where Fothannon was most like to lurk, wiping hard at my mouth with my sleeve. “Kark! Pthoo! Ptaw!”

“So…” the Wostran said. “You no want honey, I take. I take happy!”

“Why the hot and cold hells didn’t you tell me I was eating meat honey? And full of fuck-hairs, too!”

“No, is not bee to eat meat. No eat man. Land on flower. Eat flower blood. Only live in dead man house, no eat house.”

“Well. That’s. Better, I guess.”

“Is way they honor dead here.”

“It’s nasty.”

“What is nasty?”

“Bad. Nasty means ‘bad.’”

The Wostran raised both eyebrows when I said that.

“I am having your honey? Maybe? Since is nasty, from deadman?”

“No. I’ll eat my nasty honey, thanks. Do you have an opinion on this, Spanth?”

“No.”

“That’s normal. Maybe I’ll talk to the donkey.”

“Good idea.”

Somewhere in the distance, I thought I heard a fox yip.

Though, as always with my god of mischief, I wasn’t sure I’d heard it at all.

But whether I heard it or no, it reminded me of my duty.

The most important thing about serving mischief is to laugh when the joke’s on you.

So I fetched myself a double finger-full of dead-arse-honey and said, “Mmmmmm,” as I ate it with big chews, and laugh I did, almost to choking.