When the heavy dazzle of the culling-beam dispersed and left him standing alone in the narrow holding-pen, she had already been there, waiting, a careful pace outside the chitin-web door. He had put out a hand to steady himself against the wall and stood there for a long moment, transfixed by the half-forgotten sensation of the ship's life pulsing against his skin, the wordless touch of it in his mind, sensate and strong; home. He closed his eyes at the deep ache that word summoned.
*Has it been so long?* Her quiet voice slipped into his head along with the ship, and he jerked to face her, unable to suppress the snarl that bubbled in his throat, aware at the same time that the neatly-dressed figure who stood like a bright lacquered doll between the drones who escorted her was a Queen. Don't bare your teeth unless you can bite, boy! The acid tones of Snow's old Hivemaster came back to him in a snap, and he swallowed the sound, but could not keep from staring.
Scarlet hair twined in some braided arrangement that was simultaneously severe and sumptuous; pale skin, white and smooth as bone, silver-grey eyes and the barbed black tail of a clan tattoo that licked downwards from the hollow of her throat. Her lips were scarlet too, and curled in a small, cool smile as she allowed his scrutiny.
"Well?" She spoke the word aloud, deliberately withdrawing from his mind, and he stammered like a hatchling, caught off guard.
"I – you're... you're a Keeper. Frost," he named her, against all protocol, snatching clumsily at the taste-touch of what her mind had shared.
"No," said the Queen, and *Not any more,* her mind echoed. Guide flinched from the cold slap of power in her voice, noticed for the first time that she wore the leathers of a ship commander, not the decorative garb of a Queen.
*And yet I am a Queen.* There was only the openwork of the web between them now, though he did not recall moving his feet. She lifted his gaze effortlessly to meet hers, and his breath hissed between his teeth with the strain of pushing her mind away. She permitted it, with a kind of amused tolerance, but an icy thread of fear grew in him at the power he sensed there. He formed the words with painstaking slowness.
"Who. Are. You?"
The queen's smile was sharp with irony. "I was indeed Frost, Keeper of the clans for many centuries. Our people slept safe as I stood guard over them." She made a small gesture and the web door retracted, leaving them face to face. She was impossibly slender in the tailored leathers, and the height difference meant that she had to tilt her face up to maintain eye contact. Her pupils dilated, and Guide found he was trembling, adrenalin flooding his limbs. Her grey eyes were deep pools of memory, of sorrow, her throaty voice harsh. "Then the Lanteans came and slew my sister, and the hives woke. And now..." She reached out one finely-armoured claw of her feeding hand to touch his face, and her mind's voice sounded through him like the crash of the sea. *Now I am Sanctuary.*