Queen of Springtime Read Online Free PDF Page B

Yissou only knew what demand from the insect queen.
    The purposes of the hjjks were beyond all fathoming. Everyone knew that. But the message that this boy was trying so agonizingly to communicate might portend the opening of some new phase in the uneasy relationship between the People and the insect-folk. Husathirn Mueri, who was only one of several princes of the city and had reached that point in manhood when it was essential to begin thinking of rising to higher things, took it as a lucky omen that the stranger had arrived on a day when he happened to be holding the magistracy. There must be some good use to which all this could be put. First, though, he needed to figure out what the envoy was trying to say.
    An obvious interpreter came to his mind. The most celebrated of all the returned captives of the city, the only highborn girl ever to be taken: Nialli Apuilana, daughter of Taniane and Hresh. She’d know some hjjk, if anyone did. Three months in captivity among them, a few years back. Grabbed just outside the city, she was, setting off a vast uproar, and why not, the only child of the chieftain and the chronicler stolen by the bugs! Loud lamentations, much frenzy. Tremendous search of the outlying territory. All to no avail. Then, months later, the girl suddenly reappearing as if she had dropped down from the sky. Looking dazed, but no visible signs of harm. Like all who returned from the hjjks she refused to speak of her captivity; like the others also, she had undergone some alteration of personality, far more moody and remote than she had been before. And she’d been moody enough before.
    Was it safe to draw Nialli Apuilana into this? She was self-willed, unpredictable, a dangerous ally. From her powerful mother and mysterious visionary father had come a heritage of many volatile traits. No one could control her. She was some months past the age of sixteen, now, and ran wild in the city, free as a river: so far as Husathirn Mueri knew she had never let anyone couple with her, nor had she ever been known to twine, either, except of course on her twining-day, with the offering-woman Boldirinthe, but that was just the ritual to mark her coming into womanhood, when she turned thirteen. Everyone had to do that. The hjjks had taken her the very next day. Some people said she hadn’t been taken at all, that she had simply run away, because she had found her first twining so upsetting. But Husathirn Mueri suspected not. She had come back too weird; she must really have been among the hjjks.
    One other factor figured in Husathirn Mueri’s considerations, which was that he desired Nialli Apuilana with a dark fervor that burned at his core like the fires at the heart of the world. He saw her as his key to power in the city, if only she would become his mate. He hadn’t yet dared to say anything about that to her, or anyone. But perhaps drawing her into this event today would help him forge the bond that was his keenest hope.
    He looked toward Curabayn Bangkea and said, “Tell one of those useless bailiffs lounging in the hallway to go and bring Nialli Apuilana here.”
    The House of Nakhaba was where Nialli Apuilana lived, in one of the small chambers on the uppermost floor of the north wing of that enormous, sprawling building of spires, towers and intricately connected hallways. That it was a dormitory for priests and priestesses meant nothing to her. That they were priests and priestesses dedicated to a Beng god, whereas she was of the Koshmar tribe’s blood, meant even less. Those old tribal distinctions were breaking down very fast.
    When she first chose the House of Nakhaba as her lodging-place, Prince Thu-Kimnibol had wanted to know if she had done it simply as a way of shocking everyone. Smiling in his good-natured way to take the sting out of the question, yes. But it stung all the same.
    “Why, are you shocked?” Nialli Apuilana had replied.
    Thu-Kimnibol was her father’s half-brother, as different from