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

Chapter Twelve: Studying and Skiving

Rhiannon needed more data. Dyfed had decades of data on interpersonal interactions, ship owning, and how to be a responsible Queen or Commander. All laid out and organized into beautifully sensible and chronological chunks by teams of Analysts and Historians.

Rhiannon just needed access. And a few months to read it all. She could read fast, right? No matter what she’d done to the Test, she was a Perceiver by nature.

Perceivers: no, we’re not clairvoyant, just really good at drawing conclusions.

But you couldn’t draw an accurate conclusion if you didn’t have anything to base it on.

Her pad, synched to the ship’s network, beeped and flashed its light. For a moment, she considered ignoring the message request, staying away from the others till she was ready. She had so much to do, so much to try and learn from half-mentioned ideas and unstated facts.

Oh, who was she kidding? She’d set herself an impossible task, and any distraction was a good one. Gwyn’s oval face with its long, skinny nose filled Rhiannon’s tiny pad screen. Definitely a good distraction. “You look like Pwyll after slogging through Annwyn’s forests,” Gwyn said.

Rhiannon’s hand came up to smooth her hair. She had a terrible tendency to scrunch it up till it got all shandivang whenever she got frustrated or upset.

“You want to come braid this mess?” she asked.

“That’s why I called.” Gwyn turned the pad so that Rhiannon could see the bed in her room, covered in clothes, a sewing kit, and other colorful goodies. “No one’s seen you in ages, my dear. You need a break.”

Yes. The thought was like a sigh in the back of her mind, breathing cool air on her overheated brain. Hearing someone else say it made it acceptable. She had permission to step away from this fruitless hunt for information.

“Consider it done,” Rhiannon said. “I’m coming over.”

In bare moments, she was curled on Gwyn’s flannel blankets and rolling paint onto her ragged fingernails. The other girl situated herself on the floor, a hem press beside her, needle in hand for little details. Gwyn pressed and tucked, sliding folded material into the hemming machine next to her, letting it do most of the work.

Their calm activities were matched by a conversation that had nothing to do with their situation. Nothing radical or unknown. Gwyn asked, “Do you remember that crush you had on that university guy in that restaurant? Did you ever do anything about it?”

Rhiannon giggled, thinking about the tall stranger working his way through a university experience that the state didn’t provide. She’d admired his ambition. Maybe he wasn’t Devoted material, but he’d been hard working and handsome. His raven-black hair and wire-sharp nose had made him look old and young all at once.

“Nn-mm,” she denied. “What would I have said? And what if he’d turned out to be icky in reality?” Her voice went high-pitched on icky and stayed there for the rest of the sentence. Now that she didn’t have to sound commanding, she could speak in any register she wanted.

Gwyn pulled her third tunic out of the hem press and tsked at its edge. She licked a thread and wended it through the needle. “When we go back, you can see if he’s still there. After all, you’ll have your whole Hive behind you. If he turned out to be icky we could all console you.”

Gwyn didn’t say if we go back. She said when.

Rhiannon wasn’t going to think about that right now. No, she was going to think about hot boys she could have crushes on. The stranger in the restaurant was safe, not like the Devoted in her Hive. Especially because he wasn’t here.