Queen & Commander (Book One of the Hive Queen Saga)

Chapter Twenty-Two: Make Anybody Like You in 50 Easy Lessons

“What’s she like, your Queen?” She kept her voice quiet and curious. No threats here. Friendly conversation about a topic dear to your heart, Gravel Man. She doubted he’d notice her gambit’s transparency. Not if the feral madness that afflicted those Devoted who had lost a Queen already had him in its grip.

He didn’t take the bait. Just grunted and said, “You should know, complicit bitch.” The crow’s feet next to his eyes gave him a mean look when he narrowed his lids. As though the cracks in his face mirrored the cracks in his Queen-deprived mind. But then he hunched over and took a deferential step back from her cage bars. “Apologies.” He actually sounded apologetic, like he’d gone too far. But too far for a kid her age, or too far for a respected Queen?

She wished she really did have the natural people skills which she’d claimed on the Test. Or the right sort of clever Perceiver-ship.

Again, it wasn’t the time. Not the time for wishing. Not the time for regrets. This was the time for suborning the kidnappers. Time for displaying the charismatic leadership she’d read about. And a real Perceiver-level Analyst could play any role she knew the basics for. Rhiannon knew the theory behind making people do what you wanted. She’d been studying for weeks.

If at first sympathy didn’t succeed, try again with something else. Tactic two: Get him off balance. She’d outdo him in aggression. “Those fuckers!” Aggressive idiots did a lot of swearing, right? “How dare they steal your Queen?”

Whoever they were.

Gravel Man snapped out of his meek posture, vibrating with anger. “Yes.” He bit out the word and retook a step towards her like a predator. “How dare you? Only a few days, you said. We just need to ask a few questions, you said.”

No, no, no. He’d gotten off track again. He wasn’t supposed to keep accusing her. He was supposed to charge after the real villains and leave her innocent Hive alone.

“Hey now.” She raised her hands to ward off his attack. “I’d never separate anyone from their Queen.” Which raised the question, where was Gavin? He’d come with her whereas Luciano had not. Perhaps, wherever Gavin was, he had Victor and Gwyn with him?

Gravel Man slammed an open palm against her cage’s bars. She scrambled backwards from the violence and the noise, tripping over her blanket. Though she needn’t have bothered. The bars that held her in also kept him out. There had to be something extra in them because he bounced away, clutching his hand to his heart.

It took her a moment to realize that he was mumbling, more to his sore soul than to her. She crept forward on the floor, hoping to avoid his notice, but to get close enough to hear him.

“It’s only for a few days. Only a few days. Been more than a few days. Need to find Marla. Find where they moved her.” The poor man rocked himself and his injury back and forth. He’d held up remarkably well in the wake of these obscene circumstances forcing him to survive without his Queen and to take on her role in keeping her Hive together. But how much longer could he last? Was he stable enough to realize he needed to let Rhiannon go before it was too late for all of them?

“Ah, look, ah, Gravel Man,” she started without knowing what to say. All she knew was that she wanted to comfort him, to take on his pain for a little while, to give him some respite. And to get him to let her out.

Thankfully he wasn’t listening, otherwise he might’ve taken umbrage to his moniker. Also thankfully—because she was failing like a water tank that went brackish blue instead of clear when the Hydrolyze tablets dropped in—two men approached. One was the white-haired gentleman she remembered from her arrival. She rubbed her sore jaw.