“Oh,” she said, “it's you, Mr. Brooks.” Technically, Mr. Brooks was the Royal Beekeeper. But the relationship was a careful one. For one thing, although most of the staff were called by their last names Mr. Brooks shared with the cook and the butler the privilege of an honorific. Because Mr. Brooks had secret powers. He knew all about honey flows and the mating of queens. He knew about swarms, and how to destroy wasps' nests. He got the general respect shown to those, like witches and blacksmiths, whose responsibilities are not entirely to the world of the humdrum and everyday-people who, in fact, know things that others don't about things that others can't fathom. And he was generally found doing something fiddly with the hives, ambling across the kingdom in pursuit of a swarm, or smoking his pipe in his secret shed which smelled of old honey and wasp poison. You didn't offend Mr. Brooks, not unless you wanted swarms in your privy while he sat cackling in his shed.
He carefully replaced the lid on the hive and walked away. A few bees escaped from the gaping holes in his beekeeping veil.
“Afternoon, your ladyship,” he conceded.
“Hello, Mr. Brooks. What've you been doing?”
Mr. Brooks opened the door of his secret shed, and rummaged about inside.
“They're late swarming,” said the beekeeper. “I was just checking up on 'em. Fancy a cup of tea, girl?”
You couldn't stand on ceremony with Mr. Brooks. He treated everyone as an equal, or more often as a slight inferior; it probably came of ruling thousands, every day and at least she could talk to him. Mr. Brooks had always seemed to her as close to a witch as it was possible to be while still being male.
The shed was stuffed full of bits of hive, mysterious torture instruments for extracting honey, old jars, and a small stove on which a grubby teapot steamed next to a huge saucepan.
He took her silence for acceptance, and poured out two mugs.
“Is it herbal?” she quavered.
“Buggered if I know. It's just brown leaves out of a tin.”
Magrat looked uncertainly into a mug which pure tannin was staining brown. But she rallied. One thing you had to do when you were queen, she knew, was Put Commoners at their Ease. She cast around for some easeful question.
“It must be very interesting, being a beekeeper,” she said.
“Yes. It is.”
“One's often wondered-”
“What?”
“How do you actually milk them?”
The unicorn prowled through the forest. It felt blind, and out of place. This wasn't a proper land. The sky was blue, not flaming with all the colours of the aurora. And time was passing. To a creature not born subject to time, it was a sensation not unakin to falling.
It could feel its mistress inside its head, too. That was worse even than the passing of time.
In short, it was mad.
Magrat sat with her mouth open.
“I thought queens were born,” she said.
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Brooks. “There ain't no such thing as a queen egg. The bees just decides to feed one of 'em up as a queen. Feeds 'em royal jelly”
“What happens if they don't?”
“Then it just becomes an ordinary worker, your ladyship,” said Mr. Brooks, with a suspiciously republican grin.
Lucky for it, Magrat thought.
“So they have a new queen, and then what happens to the old one?”
“Usually the old girl swarms,” said Mr. Brooks. “Pushes off and takes some of the colony with her. I must've seen a thousand swarms, me. Never seen a Royal swarm, though.”
“What's a Royal swarm?”
“Can't say for sure. It's in some of the old bee books. A swarm of swarms. It's something to see, they say.” The old ' beekeeper looked wistful for a moment.