8. The Beekeepers Come to Kew’s Rescue and He Makes a Second Friend

If Kew shifted the panel just an inch, his foot would be free. But his hands were bloody and torn from sweeping broken glass off himself, so when he grabbed the bent metal panel, he yelped in pain. The darkness absorbed his cry, and he sat very still, listening for jackals.

The fall should have killed him, and nearly had, but no doubt the creatures would finish the job. In the silence he could still hear the wet crunching of their jaws on Sparrow's flesh. All around him was a spill of light, no longer flashing. Venturing beyond it might bring them down. Then his eyes would go dim like Sparrow's. The pain of being eaten was not frightening. He was in pain now . It was the fading that terrified him.

Kew, it must be remembered, was the same age as Pell: not much more than a child, just barely brushing adulthood. Sparrow's death affected him more than Hawthorn's because he could not grasp the enormity of her absence yet. He could encompass Sparrow's. Nothing in him could hold Hawthorn's.

Biting his sleeve against another cry, he shoved the panel away and drew his foot toward himself. Pins and needles made him gasp, but he stood. His pack lay nearby. Later he would see if anything was broken, but now he needed to get moving. Apprentices were not supposed to carry weapons outside the training ground, but Kew wrapped his hand in a handkerchief and picked up a long shard of glass, sharp as teeth, to ward off anything that might come. In his hand, it had the weight of the Guardian's steel: he could wield it. Though now it wasn't against straw dummies or an old woman who always pulled back before killing him. This was real.

As he left the luminous wreckage of the lantern, his overgown brightened, or perhaps became visible. Kew almost cried with relief. It was still soaked with light. Though it was dim, it might keep the jackals away. The sky above was a thin tongue of purplish blue between the crenellated jaws of the walls. The road he walked was smooth and level. Behind him, it dwindled and vanished. Ahead of him, it descended farther and farther until it ended some distance away in the tall dark length of Black Tower, where lights had been kindled against the advancing night. He had lost nearly a day to the jackals, but if he kept going and stopped for nothing, he might make it to the tower's base before night fully fell.

Every inch of him ached. Nothing had broken, but he was all over bruises and cuts, and his head had been banged up like a boiled egg someone intended to peel. A metallic taste rang in his mouth—blood? Or light from his sleeve? His water bottle had smashed during the fall, and he wanted nothing more than a drink. Well, nothing more than a drink and rest. Well, nothing more than a drink and rest and food.

The closer he came to Black Tower, the rougher the road grew. Things crunched underfoot or jabbed his soles. At first, they seemed like bits of pavement or rubble from crumbling walls—all the ways in Grey were like that; there was nothing odd about it, except that the Passage had been so clean before—but then something sparkled in the light from his robe. He stopped to look.

All around Kew were what looked like the remains of a gigantic feast. Porcelain and glassware lay scattered about, along with knives and spoons of extreme delicacy and beauty. Here and there were bones, ragged with scraps of desiccated flesh, and odds and ends of other food, all lumpen and brown from exposure. Soon the road was covered in them, and he walked even more slowly, and quite a lot more painfully, with his ankles nearly snapping as empty bottles rolled out from under him. Bent spoons snagged at his shoes, and once he narrowly escaped a carving knife stabbing right into his heel.

The trash had filled up the floor of the West Passage. Though the road seemed to keep going down, he had left it behind and was walking up a garbage heap. It was as if the residents of Black Tower had been throwing out banquets for year upon year. Odors of rot and decay wafted up from the depths. He passed an entire cake, once tiered and marvelously decorated with sugar-paste architecture, now melted and sad, with holes eaten into the molding sponges. A rat peered out of the cake at him, its palps coated in crumbs, then whisked away. There were flies all about, but also bees, who investigated old wineglasses and buzzed companionably around his head.

A glass shattered in the darkness behind him. Kew looked over his shoulder. Two yellow eyes gleamed. Then two more beside them, and two more beside them . Lifting his arm, he saw that the light was dying from his robe. Not much, but enough—and it had already been dim.

He quickened his pace. It wasn't easy—the trash heap was hazardous even if you moved slowly and carefully. Soon he was crawling up it, one hand holding out the shard of lantern glass. Insects scattered before him. The walltops grew nearer, and the sky wider.

There were at least ten jackals now. Their footing was surer than his, and as the light faded from him even more, they came close enough that he could count their teeth. The sky had darkened further. Maybe Red would let the little moon up tonight, and maybe it would be full and shine right down the Passage. And maybe a Lady would reach down and scoop him up, since it was the time to wish for improbable things.

The jackals did not growl. Their legs rustled like stalks of grass. Two broke from the pack and got ahead of him. Fetid breath warmed the air. He brandished the glass in their faces, and they stepped back, but did not retreat.

Sparrow had whistled something to make the light flash—what was it? He was on the verge of trying it when he remembered: the light would dim even more between flashes, and it was already too dark for comfort. No, that would make everything worse.

Black Tower rose high above him and kept rising, its necklaces of lamps shimmering in the summer night, its buttressed spires outstretched like welcoming arms. From some window came a voice singing a jaunty melody, accompanied by a sound he did not know. (Kew had never heard a harp, instruments being forbidden in Grey.) The top of the trash heap was very near, and the song gave him enough courage to dash for it. Yelping and growling, the jackals sprang back at his advance, and he crested the heap to find—

—that he stood on a ridge of trash, looking down into a valley of trash, glittering with knives and broken glass, and the base of Black Tower was far, far away, shrouded in the night and its own refuse.

The jackals surrounded him.

The sea of garbage came up close to the walltops, but not nearly close enough. Though ranks of arched windows lined them, he could never climb that high and break in before the jackals got him. If he could dig down into the garbage, he might be able to get away from their jaws and hide long enough for them to lose interest. Kew knelt, one hand keeping the glass aloft, and began to burrow. He threw plates and glass at the jackals and hurled butter knives. They hissed and danced in rage but did not leave. The racket echoed in the narrow Passage. Perhaps someone would hear it and come.

A light detached itself from the side of the tower and raced along the wall. Kew recognized the telltale sound of a lantern in motion. It was coming for him. The tower had heard. The tower was taking care of him. But the lantern blazed past and vanished into the dark like a shooting star. Kew was left alone with the jackals, a pit hardly big enough for a child, and a robe hardly brighter than a patch of moonlight. There was no more time. Better to face them head on than submit. He sighed and straightened up. A bee flew past him and landed briefly on his hand.

"Tell them I tried," he said, for the sake of having spoken.

The bee took off and was lost in the night. After his climb, and with his heart racing, Kew was uncomfortably warm. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve, leaving a faint track of light along his eyebrows. The nearest jackal, a brownish-green one with enormous eyes, stepped even nearer, its large three-fingered paw snapping the stem off a glass. Kew raised his weapon higher.

"Oi," said a husky voice above him.

A small person with a trout's face had opened one of the windows and was looking down at him.

"Yes?" said Kew. The jackal moved and he pointed the shard at it.

"Tried what?" said the person.

"Huh?" said Kew.

"The bee says you tried. Tried what? If you're talking about surviving, that sure as South ain't working, far as I can tell."

"Help?" said Kew. "Help me?"

"Spose I could," said the person. "If only to stop that racket you're making. Thought for sure it was another lizard out and about. Say, you've not happened to see one of those, have you?"

"Help now ?" said Kew.

"You'd know a lizard if you saw one," said the person. "Big suckers. Teeth like boats."

"Well, I've got jackals now," said Kew.

"I can see that. How good are you at climbing rope?"

"I've never tried."

The person sighed. "Fine, I'll saddle up a hive. Sit tight." They started to close the window, then swung it open again. "If they get you, do you still want to come inside?"

"Do I—?" The jackal inched forward and Kew waved the glass again. "Do I still want to come inside?"

"As bones or whatever. Some care about that kind of thing."

"Yes, all right, take me inside if they get me."

"All I wanted to know."

The window closed and Kew was left with the jackals. His robe was almost completely dark. The foremost jackal leapt toward him. He swung the glass. Greenish blood spurted from its shoulder and it twisted, landing next to him, and bounded away with a rattling cry like a dry peapod. At the same time, one jackal got his free hand, and as he made to stab it another clamped its teeth onto the back of his robe. As he struggled, the others raced forward.

A dark shape blotted out part of the sky, then landed in the trash with a vitreous clatter and slipped beneath its surface like a huge fish. Kew and the jackals froze. The trash heap below them rumbled and shifted. A tall, narrow, buzzing pyramid broke the surface. It went up and up and up, leaking bees like a cloud leaking rain, then after it came a shaggy neck and a huge back. Seated there was someone with long rabbit's ears, holding a lantern in one hand.

"Get on quick," they said to Kew. "I don't much feel like hanging around the Passage after dark."

"But I," said Kew.

"Oh," they said. "Of course." They put two fingers in their mouth and whistled. The cloud of bees dove for the jackals.

As the jackals were driven into the dark, the elk-like creature knelt on long, graceful legs. The trout helped Kew onto its back, and the creature got to its feet. It ran for the wall and leapt, clearing it in a single bound and landing on the other side in a quiet dusky court full of trees and the smell of flowers. The trout person stood there with another light.

Rabbit-ears got down from the creature's back in a sort of controlled fall. Not a jump: they simply slid off the creature's back and rolled when they hit the ground, somehow keeping the lantern up right. They looked up at Kew, their eyes gleaming in the twilight. "Now you."

"It's got to be at least ten feet," said Kew. "I'll hurt myself."

The trout sighed and made a buzzing noise with their gills. The creature lowered itself to its knees so Kew could get off. It stood and shook its furry flanks, then glided away under the trees. Now that he had a better look at it, Kew thought its tall head was almost exactly like one of Black Tower's thorny spires.

"I don't like asking them for too many favors," said the trout, taking rabbit-ears' lantern. "Bad enough we take their honey, but riding them and making them kneel? Child, don't you know there's a queen in there?"

Kew watched the hive bend its neck so the pyramidal head was closer to a bed of flowers. "I suppose I didn't," he said.

"You're lucky the bees took a shine to you," said the trout. "They didn't give me your handle, though."

"Kew, apprentice to the Guardian of Grey Tower."

The trout blinked. "They still do that there? Huh." They extended a hand. "I'm Thirty Robin, Keeper of Her Obsidian Ladyship's Hives. This is Frin, my apprentice."

Robin, Robin, Robin. That did not sound familiar as a beekeeper name, but there were clearly gaps in Hawthorn's histories.

"I am pleased to meet you both," said Kew, swallowing his doubt. "And I'm grateful to you and your bees for saving my life."

"Not my bees," said Robin. Her scaly brow furrowed and she crossed her arms. " Her bees."

"Grateful to her bees, then."

"I'd heard there wasn't a Lady in Grey no more but, North's sake, you could at least learn the ways of the rest of us."

"I will," said Kew. "I'm sorry." He swayed a little. With a gentle hand, Frin kept him from falling over.

"Come inside," said Robin, rolling her eyes. "You may have no manners, but I've got to see to you anyway. And you can tell me how in South's name you banged yourself up like this."