brown blood like the others.
He’d killed three Vord in the time it would have taken to count them out loud, something he’d never have been able to do even a couple of years before-but that wasn’t what made him dangerous in that situation.
“Wait!” Tavi shouted toward the Vord queen, still lurking behind the rank of Cane-form Vord. “You have a more profitable and efficient alternative!”
Another of the warrior Vord came at him, and Tavi struck away its hand with his sword in a shower of blue-and-scarlet sparks. The clawed hand whirled through the air and landed on the ground near the Vord queen’s feet.
“How many more warriors do you want to lose?” Tavi called, slipping aside from the next blow. “It costs you nothing to hear me out!”
The attacking Cane-form Vord suddenly slowed, then halted in place.
The Vord queen spoke again. Her voice was eerie, multilayered, as if coming from several throats simultaneously. The creature herself was-rather obviously-feminine in shape, though Tavi could see nothing of her but an outline against the glowing green of the large hive behind her-and glowing green eyes that matched it. “It is unlikely that you are here to assist us. It is more likely that you are engaged in deception.”
“Against a being who can read minds?” Tavi asked. He kept his eyes on the Vord that had suddenly ceased its attack. It was well within range to strike again. “That would seem to be an irrational act.”
A figure covered in a dark, hooded cloak appeared from behind one of the nearby warriors. She walked a few steps toward Tavi, the cloak swaying, revealing rigid-looking, green-white flesh each time she took a step forward. The queen was considerably shorter than Tavi. Within the darkness of the hood, twin candles of green light burned with faintly luminescent fire. “Indeed,” the queen murmured. “Though desperation can sometimes drive non-Vord intelligences to acts beyond reason.”
Tavi felt himself baring his teeth in a smile. “It would be simple for you to determine if such desperation drove me. You just have to come closer.”
The Vord queen was silent for a moment, her eyes narrowed to slits of green fire, but she did not move. “How did you approach so closely without being detected, creature?”
Tavi smiled at her and said nothing.
The Vord queen looked past him and made sniffing sounds. “More of the local apex predators are nearby. Though I was told the Narashan strain had been eliminated.”
Tavi, stretching his watercrafting senses to the utmost, felt it then-a quiver of… not fear, precisely, but something akin to it, if infinitely more ordered-apprehension, perhaps. “Told? By whom? Who would withhold that kind of information from you? And why would such information be withheld?”
The queen stared at him, eerily motionless.
“It is possible that an opportunity for mutual gain through cooperation exists,” Tavi said. “If you are willing to listen to me, perhaps we can work together to accomplish a shared goal.”
The queen’s voice dropped to a buzzing whisper, her voice like locust wings. “What goal?”
“The removal of a mutual enemy.”
The queen stared at him for a moment more. Then she turned and began walking toward the hive. The warriors on either side of her took a step back, making way for Tavi.
The queen looked over her shoulder, and said, “Come this way.”
The Vord queen entered the hive through a wide, unsettlingly organic-looking doorway. It reminded Tavi, somehow, of the nostril of some great beast. Vord in various forms crouched upon the hive, silent shadows against the glowing green wax. Wax spiders sat everywhere, blending into the background, and Tavi was certain that there were more in evidence than he could see.
Tavi found his feet dragging as he approached the entrance to the hive.
Well, of course they dragged. The interior of the hive was certain to be a death trap. He still remembered the Cane in the caverns beneath the Citadel, and how the Vord, possessing the bodies of the warrior’s former comrades, had forced him into the hive-and how he had emerged, taken, moments later, without expression or mind or will. Only a fool would go in there after the Vord queen unless the situation absolutely necessitated it.
His did. Besides, he told himself, going into the hive wasn’t an entirely hideous decision, tactically speaking. On open ground, the Vord could come at him from every direction. Inside the building, he could at least put his back to a wall.
Granted, he would probably find himself sinking into it to be slowly devoured by the
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
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.
