Chapter 717: New Potential Allies (4)
"Left of the traffic lane, not center. We don’t force anyone to step around and create gossip."
"Agreed." He lifted a finger. "And when we set it down, no clink. The sound should be cloth, not coin."
"Two body-lengths back," she repeated, eyes still on the mirror-token. "Do we kneel?"
"Half-crouch only," he said. "Knees high, back ready to move. We are guests, not supplicants."
She made a small sound. "Good."
He turned to Rodion. "Expected behavior?"
Rodion expanded a sidebar full of little icons that blinked in calm rhythm.
<Acceptance signals: Spiral around the gift within one minute; then a resin key rolls outward, low speed, toward neutral ground. A worker noses the mirror—one tap, not two. Guard posture softens from high-head to level-head. Scent plume shifts from ’curious-tense’ to ’work-open.’>
"And rejection?" Thalatha said.
<Smothering with loose soil or hiss-dust. Guards cross feelers; mirror ignored; key withheld. In that case, we retrieve nothing. We do not argue with dirt. We leave.>
Mikhailis raised the cone a little. "There’s also third behavior," he said. "Ignore. No spiral. No smother. Just... nothing. That is not rejection. That is ’we’re watching.’ We let the cone sit and we step back another body-length. One hour later, we try a second cone at a different angle."
Thalatha’s eyes flicked to his. "And if juveniles approach?"
"We let nurses correct them," he said. "We don’t shoo children in another house."
"And if a soldier nips?" she asked.
He blew out a soft breath. "I smile with my mouth closed and call it a compliment."
Her face stayed straight, but her mouth twitched. "Don’t be funny at a hinge."
"I am never funny," he said, fully serious for two seconds.
Rodion projected a tiny model of Mikhailis’s hand putting the cone down. The model moved slowly: hand in, cone seated, fingers leaving clean, then the hand backing away in a straight line, palm open.
<Hand leaves on a straight vector. Do not circle the gift with your palm; ants read that as attempting to claim the perimeter. Eyes down. Chin neutral. Count three slow breaths before you step back.>
"Breaths our tempo or theirs?" Mikhailis asked.
<Yours, but softer. Do not try to imitate a brood pulse; you will fail and look ridiculous.>
"Noted." He set the cone back on the tray, careful like he was putting a baby bird to sleep. Good. Let the gift do most of the talking. We are bad at not talking.
Thalatha brushed invisible dust from the flat stone beside them. "If they spiral it, we move to voice," she said. "But not voice-voice."
"Phase two," she continued, glancing at Rodion. "Split the court, gently. Not to start a fight. To give the practical ants permission to act."
Rodion shifted the holo. The Hypnoveils’ role appeared as soft banners that moved in a lazy breath: wave patterns that read neighbor, not lord. Little notes floated under them—edges to avoid, gestures to use.
He built a pheromone letter line by line. Each sentence arrived in big, clean characters, as if the hive was a classroom and they were the nicest substitute teachers in the world.
We stabilize the Choir.
We bring warmth without smoke.
We ask for a pact.
We feed first.
We do not move your dead.
We leave if asked.
Mikhailis watched the words and nodded. "Keep it narrow," he said. "Four lines speak clearer than fourteen."
Thalatha stepped in, trimming with two fingers. "Take out ’we leave if asked’ from the first message. That invites a power display. Put it as a second-message clause if they answer with ritual politeness."
Rodion adjusted. <First letter revised. Second letter includes ’we leave cleanly if requested by nurses’ council.’>
Analytics layered in on the side. Circles marked Queen-favor clusters—bigger near the central ramp, labeled in proud script. Squares marked caretaker-favor groups—dense along brood and food lines. Thin arrows showed who listened to whom.
"See these three squares?" Mikhailis said, pointing. "Brood-nurses with long routes. If they change their cadence, everyone else follows. They’re our anchors."
Thalatha nodded. "And that circle there," she added, tapping a proud script near bone craft. "Queen’s cousin. Likes ceremony. We do not step on her shadow. Let her watch us be careful."
Rodion highlighted both. <Influencers tagged. Hypnoveil theater will frame them with respect without amplifying pride.>
A small rehearsal started on the holo. A veil unfurled across a corridor like a curtain that had learned to be humble. Workers tasted the letter—literally tasted, touching the scent with their feelers, then passing it along in faint puffs to others.
Thalatha studied their speed. "They don’t rush. Good. Slow means they are not afraid."
"And if they rush?" Mikhailis asked.
"Then we made a noise we didn’t mean," she said. "We retreat one breath and remove one banner."
He nodded, eyes still on the play. She’s reading a room that isn’t even here. I could learn this kind of listening.
Rodion dropped in tiny markers like chess pieces—nurses here, artisans there, two elder drones by the bone spiral.
<Do not speak toward the elders. Speak toward the work. Elders prefer their dignity fed, not their ears.>
Mikhailis smiled. "I wish courts in the capital worked like that."
"Courts in the capital prefer their mirrors," Thalatha said.
He pressed a hand to his heart. "And I prefer my life."
"Phase three," Mikhailis said, and let the room get a little colder. He didn’t change his voice much, but the map sharpened, and the soft banners faded to the edges. "The hard option. Only if she proves harmful to her neighbors and won’t stop."
Rodion stacked two cards on the screen.
Option A: Ritual Duel — witness rules, circle drawn, no hidden bites. Sponsor a Scurabon matriarch. Clean. Public. Slow.
Option B: Surgical Decapitation — the Riftborne Necrolord moves through a veil window and ends it in one quiet moment. No spectacle. No drum.
Mikhailis looked at Thalatha. "B is safer for us," he said. "The Echo-Deacon punishes repetition. Duels repeat. Even a perfect duel is a beat-beat-beat. The Deacon loves beats."
Rodion brought up a short clip of old data: a duel somewhere else, not today, not here. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound built a staircase. On the third tap, a shadow like a judge leaned in from the edge of the world.
<Echo-Deacon intervention probability rises with rhythmic regularity. Single, unpatterned events blend into corridor noise.>
"Disgusting," Thalatha said. "A monster that likes poetry." Her eyes hardened. "If we do it, we do it clean."
Mikhailis lifted two fingers. "Agreement. One cut. No speech. No trophy."
She watched his face for a long beat. "You’ve done it before," she said.
His mouth softened. "Yes."
She didn’t ask for stories. "Define ’harmful to neighbors,’" she said instead.
Rodion opened a checklist. <Indicators: Predatory tax on brood corridors; forced starvation of adjacent colonies; echo-bait drumming; corpse desecration of non-combatants; pheromone corruption (bile lattice traces). Threshold: two major indicators, or one major and two minors.>
"We aren’t toppling a queen because she’s proud," Thalatha said. "Pride is cheap. Harm is expensive."
"Agreed," Mikhailis said. Don’t fall in love with tidy diagrams, Mikhailis. Fall in love with people who have to live inside them.
He heard himself in his head and winced a little. Right. Keep feelings pointed at the right direction.
Thalatha glanced at the tray where the cone still rested. "If we take a crown," she said quietly, "we take responsibility. Feed first. Talk second. Order last."
Mikhailis lowered his eyes and hummed a yes. "Say it again if I forget."
"I will," she said.
He believed her.
"Phase four," Rodion wrote on the board, crisp and neat, and the twist took shape with calm, clean lines. The holo broke the steps into careful pieces that fit together like bones in a hand.
Objective: keep the hive from breaking after its queen is gone.
Tactic: the Riftborne Necrolord executes the Queen cleanly and immediately raises her under the Necrolord’s mark, preserving the pheromone signature the workers recognize.
Rodion zoomed into a slice of time and painted it in colors. A narrow band glowed—three heartbeats of the Choir, maybe four. That was the window.
<Reanimation window: 2.7–4.1 Choir beats. Longer invites drift and identity scatter. Shorter risks incomplete reintegration of familiar scent charts.>
Mikhailis looked at Thalatha. "We have to be inside that window. No heroics. Just precision."
She nodded. "The Necrolord has it?"
Rodion slid a tiny ghost-image of the Riftborne Necrolord through a veil flap. The exemplar’s hands were steady. The blade didn’t glow; it didn’t need to.
<Yes. The exemplar has executed twenty-three clean raises under time pressure. Error margin near zero while the Choir is stable.>
"Problem," Rodion added, and the word didn’t sound dramatic; it sounded practical.
The panel flashed a simple line: the living Queen carries an anti-necromancy affinity. Even in death, there will be pushback, a memory that fights the leash.
Thalatha’s lips pressed thin. "So even when she’s dead, a part of her still says no."
<Correct. Residual ’no’ often appears as chaotic micro-orders in the first fifteen breaths. If left unchecked, it corrupts trust, not function. Workers obey the shape but doubt the soul. That is fatal later.>
"Solution?" Mikhailis asked, already moving his hand to the Hypnoveil panel.
Rodion beat him to it. The Hypnoveil overlay drifted down like quiet rain.
Solution: the Hypnoveil overlays a deep trance during the first breaths of reanimation, locking the old identity into a witness posture. The command spine routes to the regent. The symbol remains to calm tradition.
Thalatha watched the diagram. The veil didn’t smother; it cradled. It gave the resurrected Queen a seat and took the pen away.
"Wording?" she asked.
Rodion printed a short scent-mantra, bare and plain.
Witness and obey the regent.
Do not issue commands.
Hold the name; release the will.
"Harsh," Mikhailis said softly.
"Necessary,"