came out for which sort of occasion. She was sure the Grand Seneschal guessed by the damning look he gave her when she offered him the cup of decision, but even the Grand Seneschal would not dare refuse a cup offered him by the Chalice. The Circle drank - and Mirasol kept her cottage. And her bees.
It was possible that the overwhelming presence of her bees had discouraged Landsman from deciding to reassign her woodright whole, which would have included the cottage for its new incumbent, when he came to view the situation and decide on his recommendation for its future. The bees seemed as integral a part of the scene as the cottage and the trees. Landsman had not stayed long nor said much, but he had bowed to her so resentfully when he left that she felt his decision couldn't be against her or he would have been happier about it. And saying little could have been merely conservation of effort: the Circle had had to shout over the rumble of bees to make her hear their original news, especially since she couldn't believe it even after her ears had taken it in.
Perhaps it was her bees who kept other, more ordinary visitors away. She reminded herself that even Selim had found her bees disconcerting when there had been far fewer of them - before the Chalice had come to her. At least since she had accepted what she could do nothing about, her bees had stopped swarming, and the rivers of honey had slowed to mere streams - and you could begin to hear yourself think again, and eventually conversations no longer had to be shouted - as if by her acceptance the power of the Chalice had begun to run in the channel where it belonged. However ill suited she felt herself to contain it. She tried to think of it sometimes as she thought of her bees, something apart from her that it was her duty to tend; but it was like trying to tend the sea you were drowning in.
If it was her bees that were keeping her old friends away at least this new attribute seemed to include keeping unwelcome visitors away also. The Grand Seneschal had once come to her cottage alone, to try to convince her, he said, that she would be better taking the Chalice's quarters in the House. The underlying message was, she felt, that he wanted to keep an eye on her, and that would be easier at the House. Yes. And of the entire Circle she found him the most intimidating of all, so that at Circle meetings she had to keep reminding herself not merely that she was Chalice, but that she was also Second of the Circle. When she thought of meals taken daily either in the small House dining room, which was still large enough to seat twenty-six, with several of her fellow Circle members - either that, she supposed, or immured in her room with a tray like the Master - no. Or being walking distance from the outdoors - from grass and trees and weather and bees - instead of the other side of a single plain door: no again. It wasn't possible. It was one of those things that she, Mirasol, within the Chalice, could not do.
She was aware also that none of the Circle, most especially the Grand Seneschal, wanted to believe that the particular vessel of her Chalicehood really was honey, and she was not pretending something so ridiculous (and unheard of ) from perversity - the personal perversity of wanting to keep her cottage and her bees. She wondered which was the chicken and which the egg: did the Circle wish her to be an ordinary Chalice so that they felt justified in trying to bully her into moving to the House, or did they hope she might yet become a proper Chalice if she gave up her bees - by moving to the House?
But her bees had promptly stung the Grand Seneschal - twice - and he'd left in some confusion. She'd chased after him with salve for the throb and the swelling. She hadn't stopped him leaving for a fear a third bee would sacrifice herself to drive the interloper away. But since she needed the stingbalm so rarely herself, and since her bees were usually very well behaved (no matter how uneasy about them the visitor was), it had taken her a little while to