Tavi entered the hive, sword still in hand, dripping the watery, foul blood of the Vord. The interior was a simple dome, and though the glowing croach around them was translucent, the light flowing from it rendered the night beyond in complete blackness. Inside, though, Tavi could see as clearly as by any furylamp.
The Vord queen turned to face him, and Tavi sucked in his breath.
The creature looked like Kitai.
There were differences in this Vord queen and the last one he had seen. Her skin was nearly human instead of dark chitin, though it had an odd greenish sheen to it. She had hair, as pale as Kitai's, but worn full and long, hanging down to her hips. Her green eyes, burning with light from within, were multifaceted like an insect's, and her hands and feet sported dark, gleaming, deadly-looking nails as long as a predator bird's talons.
Beneath her cloak, she was also naked. Intensely so.
"Aleran," the queen said, and Tavi shuddered at the familiar phrase from a familiar face delivered in such an utterly alien voice. "You are far from your home."
"A coincidence," Tavi said. "I had business in the area."
"Speak of what you can do to help the Vord."
Tavi paused for a fraction of a second before he spoke, to order his thoughts. His next words could get him killed if he didn't choose them carefully.
"I know," he said, "that the Vord do not usually operate in the pattern you have been following on this continent. I know that your queens normally produce other queens, frequently, the better to perpetuate your kind."
The Vord stared.
"Yet that has not been the case, here," Tavi continued. "The queen that created you has, evidently, taken away your ability to create subordinate queens of your own."
"What makes you think that I am not the senior queen?" the creature asked him, her voice flat and expressionless.
"Logic," Tavi replied. "The operational patterns of your attack on Maraul suggested that the senior queen regarded the subordinate queens as expendable assets. Why would she place herself in such an exposed position here when she could send one of her juniors in her place? If any of you can produce more queens, why are there only three of you instead of the dozens there should be by now?"
The Vord queen was silent for several aching seconds. Then she nodded once.
"And further," Tavi said quietly, "I presume that she is not here. That she has left you and another junior queen to finish off the Canim."
"This is information I already possess," the queen hissed quietly. "It is worth nothing to me."
The walls of the hive stirred, and a dozen wax spiders appeared from where Tavi would have sworn no creature could have been hidden.
"Why?" Tavi asked. "Why has your queen changed you in this way? Does it not hamper the growth of the Vord?"
The queen's eyes narrowed. "Of course. But... she acts improperly. Irrationally. She has sampled too much of the blood of your breed."
The Vord's words were uninflected, calm, but the surge of emotion that screamed across Tavi's senses as the queen spoke was painfully intense. The young queen was filled with raw, unadulterated rage, with jealousy, and with intense, ambition-driven hate, the emotions as pure and intense as those produced by infants, unrestrained by any sense of self-control.
Tavi had to fight to keep his jaw from dropping. The Vord queens had, somehow, become more human. Distrust, the need to rule, the emotions themselves could all be used against them.
"I think she's returned to Alera by now-or at least she's on the way. What if I told you I would be willing to remove her?"
The Vord tilted its head to one side. "Why would you do such a thing?"
"Survival," Tavi replied. "If we are to survive, we must eliminate her-and you must let us escape unharmed in order for us neutralize her."
"Let you escape..." The queen leaned forward slightly. "Who?"
"All of my people and the Canim of this land," Tavi replied promptly. "All of them. They will return to Alera with me. They are necessary to deal with the threat."
She looked slowly around the interior of the hive. Then her green eyes focused on Tavi.
"It costs you nothing," Tavi urged her gently. "Slow the offensive long enough for the Canim to escape the continent. They will no longer be a threat to anything you've built here. You won't have to fight them anymore."
The queen's eyes flared with a brighter light, and she took a step closer. Tavi felt a sudden rush of thoughts flicker through his head-irrational fear sputtered through his body for no apparent reason. (He considered entirely rational the fear that he was surrounded by nightmarish creatures which might kill him, or worse, at any moment.) A rush of memories went by, bringing with them a dozen scents so distinct that he was half-certain that they were real, and not mere memories.
"There are others nearby," the queen said, slowly. "They came with you. But you have not told them your true purpose here."
A chill went down Tavi's spine as he realized that the creature was actually examining his thoughts. "No," he answered. "They never would have accepted what I planned to do." He smiled faintly. "They aren't the negotiating sort."
"You are sincere," the queen murmured.
"What is the point of attempting to deceive a being who can read your mind?" Tavi asked. "I've accomplished a lot of things by finding common interests between myself and my enemies."
"An enemy who becomes an asset is defeated as surely as one who is killed," the Vord queen said.
"More so," said Tavi.
The Vord queen gave him an odd little smile.
The dark-armored shapes of Vord warriors began to fill the entrance to the hive behind him. The Cane-form Vord came forward slowly and silently, moving awkwardly in the confined space.
Tavi's stomach seemed to drop into his boots.
"Your logic was sound but for a single, flawed assumption," the Vord queen said. "You assumed that because the junior queens had been created without the ability to create their own subordinate queens, that they would still have the desire to rule. It is a shortcoming of individuality."
Wax spiders emerged from the walls and flowed over the floor between Tavi and the queen in a miniature flood, crawling over one another until they were chest high, walling her away from him as surely any pile of stone.
"Your breed seek authority, leadership, as an extension of your personal identity. You know nothing of devoting yourself to something larger. You know nothing of truly subordinating the self for the greater good of all."