Walter ran his hand lovingly down a front flap of the child-sized oilskin duster, thanked the wide-eyed tailor one last time for the exceptional discount she’d given him, and turned to look for the town hall. “Charisma forty-eight,” he said quietly. “Paying for itself all over. Can’t wait to tell Reeve about this.” He stood on tiptoes and strained his neck to see through the crowd beyond the edge of the market. “Shouldn’t be far.”

“The free lands’ finest honey,” he heard a gruff voice shout from somewhere closer to the middle of the market square. “Happy bees make happy honey!”

“Bees?” Walter said.

It took him only a few minutes of weaving between legs, carts, and an occasional farm animal to find the honey vendor sitting on the back of a low cart lined with deep hay in which stood clay pots of varying sizes. At the front of the cart, just behind the driver’s bench, two posts rose half again the height of the cart, and from each hung a large dome made of straw. In the lantern-lit twilight, Walter could not see any bees coming or going from the hives, but he was sure he could hear them. And, thanks to his Apiculturist’s Hive Master Skill, he could sense them.

“What aye there, young Master?” The vendor said.

Tearing his attention from the hives, Walter found that the vendor was a man well-on in life, round like the hives, bald like the hives, and, like the hives, smelling strongly of honey.

“Good day, Sir,” Walter said. Walter was not surprised when, at the sound of his voice, the man’s demeanor instantly shifted to one of warmth, bordering on adoration. The man smiled, and Walter saw that not a single tooth interrupted the perfect smooth arc of his gums, top or bottom. I, Walter thought, need to ask Reeve if there’s a way we could bring toothbrushes in here to help these people. Shelving the thought, he smiled at the man. “I think I heard you advertising your honey?”

“Aye, Sir, yes, Sir,” the man said, shifting his substantial girth forward to slide off the edge of the cart and find his feet, the cart tilting farther forward once free of his weight. “Best in the free lands!”

“So I heard,” Walter said and smiled as a bee from one of the hives did a few orbits of his head before disappearing back toward the front of the cart. “May I try a dab? I happen to be something of a bee aficionado myself.”

“A fish-nahdo, Sir?” The man said, confused, but undaunted in his newfound affection for Walter.

The bee returned to orbit Walter’s head.

“I meant that I too have a fondness for bees,” Walter said. As if to prove the point, a second, then third bee joined the first in its orbit.

“Oh! Very good, Sir! I’d be pleased to have you sample my wares!” He turned and pulled toward himself a small pot that had been half-buried in the hay.

Proud of the expertise he shared with the vendor, Walter’s focus distractedly shifted closer to his own face, and he spent a few seconds trying to count the bees now circling him. Not being able to see them all at once made the task quite challenging, but he guessed there were at least ten.

The man uncorked the pot and used a wooden utensil to scoop up a daub. Twisting the utensil to and fro to keep a drip from falling, he recorked the pot before turning to Walter.

Walter stood, stiff, dozens of bees circling him.

“Ah…Sir?” The man said. “My bees seem to have a liking to ye, aye?”

“Hahee ees…” Walter said without moving his lips. The cloud grew rapidly as the two men stared at each other.

“I’m going to ask them to go somewhere else for a little while,” Walter said slowly, his lips still pulled into nearly unmoving tight lines.

“Ask them?” The man said.

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Walter fought to stay calm despite the growing swarm and tried to remember how he’d controlled the bees during the fight with Helia and her elves. I had hive trees to hold then, he thought. Closing his eyes, he started to remember how it’d felt to direct the bees toward a particular location. Without opening his eyes, he pointed away from the honey vendor and willed the bees to go in the direction he was indicating.

The kazoo-like buzz of their tiny wings suddenly dropped off, and Walter released a nervous breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

Screams behind him caused Walter to open his eyes and spin in place. “Oh, gosh,” he said as he watched frightened market-goers try to dodge the swarm of bees that was, Walter realized with some small satisfaction, making a beeline away from him in the direction he’d been pointing.

“My hives?” The man said, his voice cracking.

Walter turned back and found the man looking dazedly after his disappearing tiny livestock.

Walter cleared his throat, hoping to muster a voice more confident than the one with which he’d last spoken. “Don’t worry,” he said as he watched a long drip of honey fall from the man’s forgotten utensil onto his muck-covered boot. “I’ll leave you to your marketeering, but before I go I’ll call your bees back, OK?”

The man stared at Walter, his warmth mixed with a complete lack of understanding.

“Here,” Walter said, “just hold on a second.” He looked around, trying to judge the direction he should head when making his imminent hasty departure. Deciding on the escape route he thought would take him to the town hall, he nodded to himself. “Watch this,” he said to the man. He closed his eyes and screwed up his face with concentration as he willed the bees to come to the man’s cart.

The man looked at Walter with increasing concern. “Eh, Sir, do you need a privy, Sir?”

Unsure where exactly the bees were at the moment, Walter tried to push the command in every direction, imagining himself a mighty foghorn of bee-summoning power.

Walter opened his eyes.

“Are you a’right, Sir?” The man said.

Walter started to smile reassuringly but stopped as new sounds of surprise and fear found his ears from the edge of the market behind the man, opposite the direction in which Walter had last seen the bees. “That doesn’t seem right,” he said. He started stepping nervously in the direction of his escape route. “They should be here in just a second,” he said while simultaneously trying to judge where exactly the excitement was coming from. He stepped sideways faster. The shouts and screams were getting closer. They seemed to be coming toward him. Walter turned and took a few weaving steps between other frightened people. He paused. The sounds still seemed to be heading straight for him. He ran.

Everyone was running, but everyone was not running in the same direction as everyone else, and Walter soon felt like a pinball ricocheting off of legs and hips as he tried to stay on his feet and not be trampled. The screams were closer, only a few dozen feet away now.

He tripped and landed sprawling on his stomach. The wind was knocked out of him and, for a moment, he experienced the terror of not being able to breathe. At the same time, he tried to cover his head, certain he’d quickly be trampled to death by the wild crowd.

Not a foot found him, and the shouts and screams peaked and then quickly moved away from him. He lay on his stomach, arms over his head, and took a few shaking breaths.

Warm moist air blew against his ear.

Walter could not imagine that there was any chance the source of that moisture was someone or something he would want to meet. He remembered what the death debuff felt like, and he shuddered, then rolled onto his side to face whatever it was that had terrified half the market.

“Bunce?” Walter said to his honey badger companion.

The squat creature stared at him with beady black eyes.

“You found me?” Walter said, a small knot forming in his throat.

Bunce did not move.

Walter looked around and discovered that the market-goers had retreated several yards in every direction, forming a rough circle around him and Bunce among the carts, several of the smaller of which had been overturned in the mayhem.

Walter rolled to his knees and then stood, brushing dust from his new duster. He looked around at the confused and terrified faces. He raised a hand. “It’s OK, everyone.” He watched a wave of relief and goodwill wash over the crowd. “Just a little misunderstanding.” He chuckled. “We’re all friends here. And my little animal buddy means no harm. We’ll just be on our way to leave you good people...”

Walter hadn’t noticed the tickling sensation in his mind when it had first started, but it had grown to the point that it was starting to demand his attention. He’d had that feeling before when interacting mentally with bees, but the feeling had always seemed to come to him from a particular location nearby. Now…Walter looked around the market square and the buildings that bordered it. The feeling seemed to be coming from all directions.

People in the crowd who a moment ago had been transfixed by Walter’s charisma also seemed to be sensing something, looking nervously over their shoulders or up into the air.

“Oh, sheesh,” Walter said quietly, as he began more clearly to feel the approach of bees that were responding to his earlier command, coming to the honey vendor’s cart from every direction, near and far. He turned and found the face of the vendor in the crowd. “I…I may have asked more than just your bees to come back.”

The night sky began to hum.