Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin by Susan DeFreitas

Author:Susan DeFreitas [DeFreitas, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Forest Avenue Press
Published: 2021-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

“REALLY NEED SOME MEAD right now,” Ka said as the four Boxhead workers lowered him onto the thin branch of a low blackberry bush.

“Accept this mission and we will take you back to the Dark Woods and you can have all the mead you can drink,” one of them said.

“Mission, bah.”

One of them shoved bread in his face while the other three huddled around some object. He ate and they came around behind him; two of them grabbed him, as if to hold him down. He was much larger than all of them together, but he didn’t resist. They buzzed among themselves as they worked.

He finished the food and they backed away from him. “The Weapon is affixed.”

He flinched at those words. All his life, he’d been impotent, feeling a shadow stinger at the end of his abdomen, and now he looked down and saw it. He flexed slowly and felt its power.

“This Weapon does not have a barb, so you will be able to use it many times,” another one said. “Remember, this is the scent of Yursillinianna. She poisons the mind of all the others with her blasphemous notions. She is your target. Understood?”

Ka shook his stinger and then shook his head. “That’s not the mark of the one who refused to mate with me. Not the mark of the hive that beat me out, either.”

They looked at each other uncomfortably, buzzing lightly. “Yursillinianna first. The rest . . . they will be there. You do what you will.”

“How do we know this will work?” the one who had fed him said.

Ka flexed his abdomen, the tip of the Weapon rising erect. “Let’s give it a try, eh?” With a shudder he buzzed his wings and lifted up, then his body spasmed, spiking the questioning worker in the left eye.

As the victim twitched and slowly twisted, falling from the branch, the other three leapt into the air and backed away, squirting a clamor of warning scents.

“I’m not one of your lot,” Ka said, the force of his glare buffeting them further. “I’m not some worker-born drone. I’m queen-brood. I’m royalty. One queen denied me my mate-right. And my queen-mother denied me the shelter of my hive. Now tell me where they are.”

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