Queenless - KA Short

The Queenless were an interesting group. While most ants were named after plants and creatures common in the ant-world, the Queenless were not. Common names were Copper, Zinc, Steel, and Pyrite, for example, as well as Iron, Silver, and Brass.

Don’t fret about committing those to memory. The only name up there you should worry about is Brass.

Her full title was Queenless Brass, and she was addressed as such by most any ant she met who was not also Queenless. She lived within Harrow, a joined colony of dark red ants—analogous to a country—made up of five smaller colonies—analogous to states.

As an egg Brass had been randomly selected to be inducted into the Queenless’s ranks. She was subject to isolation from any other ants and was fed by a single nurse, Leaf. Once she hatched from her cocoon, her First Scent had been soil, the cool tang of ores, the faint and damp wisps of roots. Her chamber had been scrubbed of any ant-scent.

From there, she was left for an hour, utterly confused and miserable, until Leaf came to collect her and send her to the Queenless Halls. These halls stretched beneath each colony and were separated from the normal goings on of Harrow, tended to by a select few ants sworn under Harrow Law to allow minimum knowledge from the outside to enter.

Often, the servants and the Queenless didn’t converse. There was little to talk about that couldn’t get them in trouble.

Brass, still confused but less miserable with company, then had Leaf explain to her why she had been isolated and why she was there:

To be the perfect diplomat.

With no colony smell as her First Scent, she had no connection to any queen, nor to any ant of a certain origin. In theory, this would make her perfectly unbiased, unwilling to give any group an edge over the other when an agreement or compromise had to be made. But to keep this up required strict laws, strict enforcement, and for the Queenless Hall to have all potentially biased information and Harrow-born ants sealed out.

“I am your designated nurse, at your service,” Leaf had told her, “And you are henceforth Queenless Brass.”

Leaf then told Brass all the rules of being Queenless and led her to a small room where two hundred or so other ants were crowded. Some were young, some were old, some were about Brass’s age and also standing bewildered next to their nurses.

On the ceiling was a large ant addressing the crowd.

Brass was nudged inside by Leaf, and her first day of work began.

 

With that out of the way, let’s move forward in time a little, when Queenless Brass was about a season into her work.

In this time, she had visited the northernmost and southernmost ends of Harrow, from Pine to Loam, going on a total of six trips. Each trip lasted a day at most, so the rest of Brass’s twenty-four days of life were spent in relative isolation, in what was functionally a separate colony with only a few hundred ants in it at a time. It must seem like barely anything to you but considering an ant’s lifespan is only four seasons (a year) it’s certainly not insignificant.

On this day, Brass was in her room wondering whether this line or work was affecting her or not. She was still surrounded by ants, but there were so few. And she could only talk with some of them, the rest were hesitant to speak, wary of the secret reporters among them watching for any infraction of the Queenless rules.

Was this what a healthy ant lived like? She supposed it didn’t matter. It was her life and there was little she could do to change it.

Brass turned to the entryway of her room as Leaf walked in. She was a shade or two darker than Brass with a distinguishing notch carved into her forehead like all Queenless and their servants did. It was impossible for any ant greeting her to miss.

Though it was pitch black almost everywhere in the colonies and the Queenless Halls, the ants’ sharp sense of smell afforded them the ability to see (in a way).

Brass waited until Leaf stepped close and brushed her antennae across her head just to be sure. “Leaf,” she said, “What have you brought me today?”

“Food and news.”

“News,” Brass said, “I rarely get that.”

Leaf handed Brass a nutshell bowl of nectar. She then recounted her news in a way that suggested she’d rehearsed, “At the border of Loam and Clay, there has been a murder. Queendom Clay is suspected for proximity but Pine is also under scrutiny.”

“Queendom Pine?” Brass almost laughed, “That’s a half-day’s travel at least, usually more. If an ant from there is a suspect then it can’t be an accident or a stupid, split-second decision. You mean to tell me the murder is suspected of being deliberate.”

“Almost certainly planned in advance as well.”

“And why are the Queenless being called on? We’re diplomats.”

“The victim is a noble of the Harrow Court. That puts the case in a contentious spot, rife for biases to obscure the truth. Additionally, Loam and Clay have had a series of small, aggressive encounters with one another over the season. There were concerns that a regular investigator would jump to a hasty conclusion.”

“I see. Can I know more now or must I leave to investigate?”

“You are to come to an investigator’s chamber near the Loam-Clay border and inspect the body. Your instructions are to commit every scent and detail of it to memory before you return to the Halls.”

“And then?”

“Most likely you’ll get sent off to Pine as soon as possible.” Leaf paused and glanced over her shoulder, then whispered, “If I may offer an unlawful opinion, I do not believe this case is solvable. Don’t feel bad if things poorly.”

“What makes you say that?” Brass whispered back.

“Think about it, Brass, a massively high-ranking ant has been murdered and nobody knows anything. Nobody saw it. Nobody heard it. Nobody smelled it. All anybody knows is that she was slain by an ant and left outside Queendom Clay’s entrance.”

“Hm,” said Brass.

“You could almost swear it was an as”—

They stopped talking at the sound of another ant approaching the room.

It was Silver who rounded the corner, distinguished by a smell that could best be described as cold, like a burst of chilled winter air to the nose.

Brass and Leaf had long suspected Silver of being a reporter. Her poor nurse was constantly chided for speaking too much, then when she tried to be curt to avoid rule breaking, chided for speaking too little. Silver gave the rest of the Queenless this treatment as well. Brass had been on the receiving end of her post-Hallow visit interviews before. They were a horrible, drawn-out affair.

No nerves were spared—all were irritated by Queenless Silver.

“What are you two talking about? Breeze has given me all the necessary details already, I can’t imagine there’s much more for you to say to one another,” Silver said.

“What are you implying?” Brass asked. She huffed, blowing anger-scent in Silver’s direction.

Leaf took a more reserved approach. “Brass does not bind my jaws so tightly,” she said, “I am sure Breeze would have more to say if she weren’t cowering from your scolding all the time.”

“Tch,” Silver clicked her jaws, “Spoken like a law breaker. I ought to report you.” She then stalked off, saying over her shoulder, “Be out in a minute or else!”

Though Silver often threatened to report ants to the rarely seen Higher Ups, she never went through with it. Perhaps she knew her “evidence” amounted to nothing.

“She’s right, I should go now,” Brass admitted, “I’ll see you later.”

“Goodbye,” said Leaf.

Brass departed her room, met up with four other Queenless ants (including Silver) and left for Harrow.

They travelled first through the barren Hall tunnels, then up into Clay, then into a small food storeroom that had been hastily cleared out to make room for the deceased ant. After ensuring the Queenless knew everything they needed to know, the Clay-born ants stepped aside to allow them in.

Inside the chamber, the victim had been laid on her back. By ant standards she was quite pretty (though that hardly mattered), almost queenlike in appearance but nowhere near as large. She was a tad more orange than red as well. Her head had been bitten off but was placed above her neck to give an appearance that she was still in one piece.

Nothing else about her body had been damaged, however. At least not externally.

Brass immediately noticed the Queendom Pine scent still lingering on her and understood the suspicion towards them. However, given her job, it could simply be because she visited the place before her death. She stepped closer to the ant to smell her better.

Already, the signature ant-death-scent was rising from under the noble’s bones. She smelled Loam-born and there was a strong undertone of fear-scent beneath the death. There were also scents from Clay present. And the ant herself, her signature identifying smell (her face or fingerprints in human terms) was light and earthy. Pollen on the wind, and perhaps some dust.

Brass was the first to speak.

“She had the time to realize she was being attacked, so the murderer didn’t sneak up on her, or at least did it poorly. She wasn’t dragged away from the scene so it must have happened fast regardless,” she paused to allow the other Queenless to add to her assessment.

“The murderer could have lured her out of the colony and run into the underbrush once the deed was done, then returned through a different entryway,” Silver said.

“She had to have been good friends with the victim, too,” another Queenless said, “No other ant could get a noble to leave her station, let alone go outside. Not unless she was a hunter.”

“She wasn’t. And even if she were, Noble Hunters rarely leave the colony, they’re overseers like every other noble,” Silver said, “So a close friend or another noble.”

Had there been Harrow-born ants present, the suggestion would have caused an uproar. Nobles were respected, skilled, civilized insects who would never stoop to sisterly murder.

This was a perk of being Queenless, Brass supposed.

“That is true, but it had to be someone who knows the schedules of Loam and Clay well, too. It’s unlikely the murder occurred during a break in the entrance’s guard shifts on accident. If the theory that a Pine ant did this is correct, this was extraordinarily well planned,” Brass said.

“It was probably a Loam or Clay-born ant. Someone who is part of the Court and fits those criteria is most likely.”

“There’s no way to be sure. I think in the best case, we can interrogate the nobles and find some discrepancy in one of their stories that proves they’re lying.” Brass thought this was unlikely, though.

Leaf was probably right. Such a meticulous planner would never allow herself to be caught, she must have practiced her story a thousand times already.

Or perhaps this was an assassination, as Leaf had been trying to say before Silver arrived. In that case, there’d be a hundred cover stories, potentially millions of ants willing to lie and turn the other way…

Either way, in such cases this was a matter of theatrics. Leaf had taught her this long ago.

“I’m all done here, let’s hurry back,” Silver said, “I don’t want to get contaminated.”

Brass would have rolled her eyes if she could.