Honeycomb by Joanne Harris (book series for 12 year olds .txt) 📕

that he carried no sword and wore no crown. Even his coat of a thousand eyes, stolen from the Spider Queen, was gone, which meant that, if his story was true, he was virtually helpless. But still, the Queen did not believe that he was unprotected. She knew his reputation, and she was sure he had a plan.

“Very well. Your question,” she said, and swallowed a mouthful of the wine.

The Lacewing King smiled at her. “What’s your name?”

Now, that may seem a harmless question. But names are things of tremendous power, not to be given lightly. A named thing is a tamed thing, or so the old saying goes, and the Queen was not about to give hers away so easily to the enemy. So she gnashed her razor teeth and said:

“I’ll take the forfeit.”

The King shrugged. “As you wish,” he said. “Then, your forfeit is—a dance.”

“A dance?” repeated the Dragonfly Queen.

“Why, yes, if it pleases my Lady,” he said. “I’ve heard of your grace and elegance.”

This was flattery, of course. The Dragonfly Queen was a warrior; fierce and merciless in combat, but neither graceful nor elegant. But she had no choice, and so she prepared, most reluctantly, to dance. But she could not dance in full battle-gear. So she took off her belt and her dragon-glass sword, and her armour (which was flexible as spider-silk, but as hard as Damascus steel), leaving only her helmet over her veil of dragonfly lace. Then she ordered her cricket quartet to play a rasping melody.

The King was an excellent dancer, taught as a child by a water-skater of tremendous skill and renown, and he led the Queen into the dance, holding her gently by the waist. The Dragonfly Queen, disoriented, and feeling her rage and hunger increase, vowed that her next question would put the King at her mercy.

At last, she pulled away and said, “Second question. Whom do you fear?”

It was a dangerous question. To know a man’s deepest fear is to wield a weapon of terrible potency. The Lacewing King thought for a moment, taking more of the spiked wine.

“Whom do I fear? My mother, of course. My turn again.”

The Dragonfly Queen hid her displeasure. There was no doubt he was telling the truth. What man does not secretly fear his mother’s disapproval?

“I came here with a ship and its crew. Where are they now?” asked the Lacewing King.

Once more, the Dragonfly Queen gnashed her teeth. Her warriors had devoured the crew the moment she had captured the King. To warn him would be madness—she needed him to finish the game.

“I’ll take the forfeit,” she said at last, promising herself to use a particularly small, blunt knife when she cut him into pieces.

“Very well, I want a kiss,” said the Lacewing King, and smiled.

The Dragonfly Queen became ashen with rage. She slashed at the air with her razor claws. But she could not abandon the game. And so she took off her helmet and kissed the Lacewing King on the mouth. She made sure it hurt, too; like kissing a mouthful of razor-blades.

But the Lacewing King made no comment. He simply dabbed the blood from his mouth and said, “Your turn, my Lady.”

Now the Queen thought very hard. By this time, she was certain that the King was in league with the enemy, and she needed a question that would tax him to the utmost. She knew that the best way to destroy a man is to find his heart—and the Lacewing King had a special knack for making folk want to destroy him. And so she poured the last of the wine and asked him:

“Whom do you love most?”

Until then, the Lacewing King had seemed to have the upper hand. But the Queen’s third question troubled him. To answer it was out of the question. He had no intention of telling her that the one he loved most was a human child—the Barefoot Princess, whom he believed to be safe and sound in the care of the Glow-Worm Chancellor. However, he knew that his forfeit would be designed to kill him—and probably in the slowest and most painful way imaginable. And yet, he simply smiled again, and said:

“I’ll take the forfeit.”

“Very well,” said the Dragonfly Queen. “You know the rules of the game. If you fail—”

“I won’t fail,” said the Lacewing King.

The Dragonfly Queen gave her venomous smile. “Very well, my Lord,” she said. “Then bring me the head of my enemy, the Queen Below the Water.”

49

T

HE

Q

UEEN

B

ELOW THE

W

ATER

Now the Dragonfly Queen and her rival, the Queen Below the Water, had been enemies since before the days of the Moon Queen of the Undersea. In fact, they had been enemies since anyone could remember, although the cause of their enmity had long since been forgotten.

The Dragonfly Queen lived on top of a cliff, with her army of cannibal warriors. The Queen Below the Water lived in her pale-green palace under the shadow of the cliff. And each of the two Queens was convinced that the other meant to destroy her. There was some truth in this; the Queen Below the Water regularly lost her folk if they approached the surface, and as for the Dragonfly Queen, she found that her eggs and larvae disappeared whenever she left them unsupervised. But, in spite of incursions from both sides, neither side was strong enough to win the war outright, and so they had remained at a standstill for years, neither of them bold enough to launch a direct attack on the enemy.

But now, at last, the Dragonfly Queen saw a way to strike back at her rival. She believed that the Lacewing King was spying for the Queen Below the Water—but either way, the rules of their game meant that he must take her life, or forfeit his own in consequence.

As for the King, he was well aware of the danger in which he now found himself. But, as always, he had