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The third book in the Launuru and Kazmina series, Like Bees in Springtime, is available for free in epub format from Smashwords and for $0.99 in Kindle format from Amazon. For whatever reason, Amazon doesn’t allow you to make books available for free? I think I’ve seen free books on their store before, but it didn’t allow me to set the price to zero. I’ve also reduced the price of the first two books in the series, Wine Can’t be Pressed Into Grapes and When Wasps Make Honey, and the spin-off in the same setting with different characters, A Notional Treason, to zero on Smashwords and $0.99 on Kindle.
I’ve been charging money for this series for a decade, and made some decent pocket change off of it, but as my understanding of gender and sexuality has matured in recent years, I’ve felt vaguely guilty about making money (however small the amounts) off of a book or books that I no longer feel quite right about. There is a lot to like about the first two books in the series, but the first one in particular has enough compulsory heterosexuality and gender essentialism baked into the plot and worldbuilding that I don’t really want to charge money for it anymore. I considered taking down the first two books and leaving the third unpublished, but finally decided that enough people liked the first two that I’d keep them available, while editing the last one to match my current understanding of gender better, and finally releasing it.
Kazmina has returned to her home country of Setuaznu to join the People’s Army, defending the fledgling Republic from the royalist factions supporting different claimants to the throne. And she’s trying to reproduce her accidental discovery of a spell to turn ordinary people into wizards. Her discovery will change the world, but will it happen fast enough to change the outcome of the war? Kazmina has returned to her home country of Setuaznu to join the People’s Army, defending the fledgling Republic from the royalist factions supporting different claimants to the throne. And she’s trying to reproduce her accidental discovery of a spell to turn ordinary people into wizards. Meanwhile, Kiznelan, one of the royalist wizards, is trying to develop an improved telepathy spell that works at greater distances.
Both their discoveries will change the outcome of the war, and leave a lasting mark on the world after it’s over.
Content warnings: mind control, hive mind, traumatic injury, depression, death and injury of cavalry horses, not as much death as you’d realistically expect in a war story, involuntary transformation, backstory rape mentioned
Here is an excerpt from the opening of Like Bees in Springtime:
A hospital in Vmanashi. Fifteenth day of second month, third year of the Republic.
Kazmina looked up as the orderlies brought in her next patient, and possibly her next experimental subject. He was missing his right leg, which had been amputated above the knee and not long ago; it wasn’t fully healed.
“Set him down on the cot there,” she told the orderlies. “You can go now.” They left and she shut the door behind them.
The room the army had given her to work with was a small one, off in a corner of the hospital. It was a big house that had been confiscated from a royalist family when the People’s Army took Vmanashi. This had once been a sitting room; Kazmina had spread the little table with more books and papers than it could comfortably hold, and a cot had been squeezed in to the other end of the room, but it still held several cabinets and shelves once belonging to the former owners of the house, long since looted of most of their contents, as well as three chairs, one upholstered and two of bare wood.
“Do you understand me?” she asked. “Or do we need an interpreter?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. From a couple of words she couldn’t be sure what dialect of Tuaznu the man spoke, but probably northern or coastal, pretty close to her own. She went on:
“I’m going to give you back your leg. The question is whether I give you something else as well. Do you speak any languages besides Tuaznu?”
“A little Ilishpi. My mother’s parents spoke it. What does that have to do with –”
That pinned him down as being from the northwest, nearer the coast than Kazmina’s home town of Vmanashi. “Can you read and write?”
“Sure; I used to keep records for the mill back home. I haven’t read many books, if that’s what you’re asking, but I’ve read all the ones in our village.”
“Good. I gather, if you were keeping records for a mill, you know arithmetic too?”
“Sure, try me.”
She gave him some arithmetic problems and he solved them correctly; she gave him a copy of Vnelda’s History of the Reign of King Tazniva and had him read a passage aloud, then asked him questions about it. He would do, she decided.
“Before I restore your leg, and maybe do something else, I need you to swear secrecy. You mustn’t tell anyone about what we do here, except the obvious part about how a wizard restored your leg. And if you keep your mouth shut even about that, around people who don’t know you ever lost your leg, that’s best.”
“All right, I guess you don’t want the enemy wizards figuring out how you do it? I swear I won’t tell. You want to blindfold me while you work your spells?”
“That won’t be necessary. You might as well watch and listen, though you won’t understand much. Before we go any farther, I need to ask you if you’ll volunteer to help me with some magical research.”
“What?”
“I’m developing a new spell – or devising a new variation of an existing spell, rather. I’ll test it on you while I’m restoring your leg – or I won’t, if you don’t want to volunteer; in that case I’ll just restore the leg the tried-and-true way and send you back.”
“All right, that sounds fine. I’ll volunteer.”
“Wait. I’m required to warn you of the risks first. If I use the experimental version of the spell, you’ll have a different face and figure – probably just slightly different, but maybe enough that your friends won’t recognize you. If the spell doesn’t work – if it doesn’t have the extra effect I’m looking for – I’ll just change you back into your old self, plus the leg of course, probably in an hour or less. But there’s a slight risk something could happen to me and I wouldn’t be able to restore you; you’d be stuck with a strange face. I think those are the only risks; I’ve already tested the spell on animals and determined it’s pretty safe.”
“Might it be a woman’s face?” he asked apprehensively. “I heard tell how some of you wizards turned enemy soldiers into women or little girls –”
“You won’t be a woman,” she reassured him. “I’ve got better control of the spell than that. You’ll be a man, within a few centimeters of your current height, and recognizable as related to your parents if not obviously their son. You might not look like you, but more like a brother or cousin of your old self. And probably for less than an hour.”
“Oh. Well, that’s all right then. Go ahead.”
“I’ll need to cut a lock of hair first.” She took up the scissors from her table and came around to the cot, leaning over him to cut a small lock of hair near his left ear. She tucked it into a folded piece of paper, labeled it with a lead pencil, and went to work.
First she worked the divination spell, one she had only recently mastered, which would test him for wizardly potential. As usual, like all of her test subjects so far, he had none. Then she cast the pain-deadening spell her father had taught her. She was going to use a slower version of her mother’s total transformation spell, and that would hurt a lot if she didn’t take precautions. Then she began working the transformation spell that would modify the man slightly, copying a chapter of Kazmina’s own life-runes into his animate structure, and possibly, if variant #56 of the transformation spell worked right, make him a potential wizard.
(Of the first fifty-five variants, thirty-eight did nothing, fourteen worked just like her mother’s transformation spell except that they left her feeling more drained, and three had odd side effects that seemed unrelated to transformation. She’d set those aside for further research during peacetime.)
She worked the variant spell slowly, speaking the text aloud and making gestures to guide the flow of energies. The original spell her mother had taught her, she knew so well she could cast it in a few moments without speaking or gesturing; most of the work was carried on by her subconscious mind, so she could just concentrate on the form she wanted someone to take, and they took it. But a little over a year ago, when she was tired and in a hurry, she’d somehow cast the spell a little differently, when using it to disguise some escaped slaves so their master and overseer wouldn’t recognize them. And she’d turned several of them into potential wizards.
She hadn’t realized it at the time, but later some of those escaped slaves had taken jobs as servants in the house of a Harafran diviner, Hestan of Fenrashi. With his trained wizard-sight, he’d noticed their wizardly potential, and, on working a divination to determine which wizard they were related to – assuming at first they were probably misplaced bastard children of some known wizard – he found it pointed squarely at Kazmina herself, who had used bits of her own life-runes in remaking the former slaves’ bodies.
During the conclave of wizards last year, Hestan had spoken to Kazmina and her father Psavian about this and had agreed to keep quiet about this explosive discovery until Kazmina had the chance to do more research on it. Her mother Znembalan, who’d invented the transformation spell, was unable to do the research just then, as she was serving a sentence for war crimes – she had to spend a year in service to the Republic’s enemies, healing their wounded soldiers and restoring, as far as possible, all the soldiers she’d transformed with her magic.
As Kazmina went on casting the spell, the man’s body shifted, his right leg growing back even as his left leg grew a few centimeters longer. His facial features melted and flowed into a new configuration, his eyes slightly farther apart, his lips slightly thinner, his nose slightly smaller. Then it was done. Kazmina sat down to rest for a few moments before going on to the next stage.
The soldier patted his new leg gingerly. “Thank you, ma’am. I thought I’d never walk again with that leg gone. Can I stand up now?”
“Sure, but don’t leave the room. I’ve got to do some tests to see if my new version of the leg-regrowing spell had certain side effects.”
He stood up and stretched, a broad grin on his face; Kazmina couldn’t help smiling back. This was one of the best parts of being a wizard – that and flying. The soldier paced back and forth a little in the narrow room the army had allotted her for her research, then sat down on the cot again. “It seems to work fine, ma’am. Thank you again ever so much!”
“You’re welcome. Now sit still, and I’ll do my tests.”
She spoke the divination spell that would show her if the man now had wizardly potential. Until recently, she’d had to depend on a diviner from the Intelligence Office to test her subjects after their initial transformation. But by now she’d learned that spell and could test them herself.
And this man had no more wizardly potential than he’d had before she transformed him.
“All right,” she said, “give me just a moment and I’ll have you back to your usual self…” She picked up the packet of hair she’d cut from his original body and studied it for a moment, reading the life-runes from the hair and imposing them on his body, using the original version of the transformation spell which she could cast silently in moments. The soldier reverted to his original self, plus a restored leg and minus a few scars.
“We’re done here,” she said with a forced smile. “Tell the captain I said you’re cleared to return to your unit.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you again.” He saluted and left the room.
She sighed and made another entry in her research log. Variant #56 of the transformation spell, combined with chapter forty-five of her own life-runes: no obvious effect. Next time, she’d try it with chapter forty-six, and then she’d have to come up with variant #57. She might as well start planning out the new variant while she waited for her next patient. Soon, her mother’s sentence would be up and she could work with her on it.
The infirmary in Ndivalan’s camp, somewhere in southwestern Setuaznu. 3/2/16
Znembalan completed his healing spell, then palpated the man’s belly, where the swelling was already going down. “Keep him lying down and resting for another day,” he said to Zulkhitem, the Mezinakhi nurse who was accompanying him on his rounds, “then he can probably go back to his unit. Let’s see, who’s next?”
The soldier in the next cot had burns, probably pyromantic in origin, all over his face and chest and right arm; he’d lost both eyes. He was bandaged all over. There was no other way; Znembalan had to do a transformation. Standard healing spells would take many days of repeated application to take care of the skin, and still wouldn’t restore the man’s sight. He studied the man’s life-runes and worked the spell to restore the man’s body to what the life-runes said it should be; the skin all over his body, not just in the burned areas, turned the reddish pink of a newborn baby. The man screamed with the momentary pain of the transformation, then gasped, and Znembalan told Zulkhitem:
“Take off his bandages while I examine the next patient.”
She was just beginning to do so when a messenger boy ran into the field infirmary and looked around, then dashed over to Znembalan and said: “Sir, General Sevmek wants you in his tent right now.”
“Very well.” He glanced aside at the soldier he’d just transformed; the bandages were half off and the man’s new eyes were exposed. Znembalan nodded to Zulkhitem and said: “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” and followed the messenger boy out of the infirmary.
The general’s tent wasn’t far away, but Znembalan had never been there since the army camped here, less than a hundred kilometers from Vmanashi, where his daughter was stationed, or had been recently. He’d seen the general at a distance several times since he was sent to serve the self-styled “King Ndivalan”’s army, but didn’t know him.
When he followed the boy into the tent, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim light; then he saw several men standing around, some sitting on camp stools, and two lying on cots, apparently unconscious. By his insignia, one of the sitting men must be the general. “You sent for me?”
“You’re the anarchist wizard, our prisoner?”
“Close enough. I’m Znembalan of Vmanashi.” Technically he was a prisoner of the Compact of Wizards, but he was in the custody of Ndivalan’s army. The geas the conclave had placed him under required him to obey certain orders the royalist officers gave him, but it didn’t require him to be especially respectful; he neither saluted nor addressed the general by his title, as he didn’t recognize the authority of the government he served.
“I want you to heal these men by transforming them,” he said. “Turn each of them into a healthy version of the other man.”
“I’ll see if they need transformations,” Znembalan said. “I normally save my energy by not working a transformation when a basic healing spell will do.”
“You’ll do what I tell you,” the general blustered, and Znembalan shook his head.
“I’ve already tested the boundaries of the geas; I know what kind of orders I’m required to obey. And my sentence is over in just a few days, so there’s not much you can do to me if I refuse. Now, if you’ll be quiet, I can work a couple of diagnostic spells and figure out what these men really need…”
The general turned to one of the men standing around; Znembalan half-listened while he worked his diagnostic spell on the first man, the younger of the two, who was sweaty, with an unhealthy pallor. “Is he right?” the general asked. The other man responded in a low tone that Znembalan couldn’t catch.
The man had been poisoned, probably by something in his food. That was odd; if enemy saboteurs had poisoned the army’s food supply (as Znembalan himself had done a couple of times, when he was free), or if part of the supplies had gone bad naturally, there should have been a lot of poisoning cases in the infirmary, but Znembalan hadn’t seen any lately. He turned to the older man and worked another diagnostic, tuning out the low murmur of conversation until he was interrupted by the general speaking up louder:
“You’ll be on bread and water for the rest of your sentence if you don’t do as I say.”
“Fine. Don’t interrupt me again.” He resumed the broken diagnostic spell, and a few moments later exclaimed: “Hey! This man’s not sick at all; he’s just under a sleep spell!”
One of the younger men – he looked vaguely familiar, and Znembalan thought he remembered seeing him at a regional meeting of wizards – muttered, “I told you it wouldn’t work, sir.” Znembalan resumed:
“I don’t know what you’re about, but I’m just going to work a basic healing spell on this other man. It will keep him from dying of the poison – poison I suspect you gave him, but I don’t see how to prove it – and have him back on his feet in a day or two. Make sure he gets plenty to drink in the next few days: boiled water or weak beer.” He turned back to the poisoned man and started working the healing spell.
The general and his advisors murmured together again. “Wait,” the general said. “We’ll let you go early if you’ll do the transformations I asked for.”
“No. I’ve missed my friends for almost eight months, I can hold out for four more days. Besides, you don’t have the authority to let me go home early; if you don’t want to use my services for the next few days, I’d still be a prisoner of the Compact. Don’t interrupt again.”
Znembalan healed the poisoned man; he also took a small sample of the man’s hair, and of the other, sleeping man’s as well. Later on, when he was free, he’d get a diviner to work on the hair samples and figure out who these men were. He suspected the poisoned man was a prisoner of war, either a republican or a supporter of “King Mbavalash,” and that the general had wanted to disguise one of his own soldiers before exchanging prisoners, to insert a spy into the enemy ranks. Znembalan had done that kind of transformation before, when he was serving in the People’s Army, but he wasn’t going to help the royalists do it. The geas required him to change back the people he’d transformed, and to heal sick and wounded men, not to obey any and all arbitrary orders.
He returned to the infirmary. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?” he asked Zulkhitem.
“Pezikhal started groaning and went into a cold sweat,” she said. “His pulse is weaker than before.”
“I’ll take him next, then. Where is he…?”
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Free books on Amazon
I have a friend who has a free book on Amazon. He tells me that he needed to have it elsewhere offered for free so if it's on Smashwords for free, then you should be able to set the price to zero. I don't know how you would prove it was for free elsewhere.
Also Smashwords offers it in MOBI which is readable by Kindle; you just have to import it.
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Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann