by Martha Wells
The Hians had killed Magrim outright, to keep him from using his skill as a horticultural to track their flying boat, and Jade had felt certain that Vendoin was also responsible for Kellimdar’s death. He had been given the same poison as the Kish who had survived, but there was nothing to show that something else hadn’t been forced down his throat once he was unconscious. Kellimdar was on the same level of authority as Callumkal, and if he had been with Kalam to support him and second his accusation of Vendoin and the Hians, they probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. She began, “We need to get out of here before they—”
Then Malachite was suddenly standing beside them.
Kalam flinched, and Jade managed not to hiss. Malachite was a head taller than Jade and broader in the shoulder, and it should have been impossible for her to approach so closely without Jade knowing. Yet here she was.
Jade said, “You heard all that?” Of course she heard all that. Malachite’s scales were a dark green, webbed over with a layer of scar tissue that obscured her web of secondary color, and she faded into the shadows. All queens could keep other consorts, warriors, and Arbora from shifting, but Jade had never encountered a queen who could use her mental connections to other Raksura in the ways Malachite could. She had never encountered another queen who had needed to do what Malachite had done to save her court.
Malachite moved one spine in a way Jade knew by now meant assent. All Malachite’s concentrated attention was on Kalam. “Do they know there are Raksura here?”
“Yes.” Kalam was a little accustomed to Malachite by now, and Raksura in general, and managed to bear the scrutiny. “I had to tell them, to explain what had happened. I told them about the Fell, too. Not the half-Fell,” he added hastily. “I didn’t know how to explain it, and Rorra thought it best not to, that it would just confuse them.”
Good for Rorra, Jade thought. They were in enough trouble as it was. “We need to get out of here.”
“Not through the groundling city,” Malachite said. She tilted her head toward Jade. “We’ll fly out to sea, toward the barrier islands we passed, and the wind-ship can meet us there.”
Jade managed not to say that she had thought of that already. She turned to call up to Briar, “Go tell the warriors to get ready. Tell them to leave nothing behind, we won’t be coming back to this boat. We’re going to the Golden Isles wind-ship.”
Briar jumped down to the walkway and headed for the nearest hatch, and Kalam’s shoulders slumped in relief. Maybe he had nursed a suspicious fear that the Raksura would desert him, too.
Since the Hians had betrayed them, things had been tense with Kalam. He was Callumkal’s son, and young to be facing the abduction of his parent and the responsibility for trying to get help from the other Kish-Jandera. The deaths of the crew who hadn’t survived the poison had been hard enough for him. It had just made the situation worse to find out that the foundation builder artifact that the Hians had plotted to steal had been brought aboard the sunsailer by the Raksura, even if it was inadvertent. Then Jade had had to tell him that most of the Raksura could speak Kedaic, that she had ordered the others to deliberately deceive the Kish-Jandera because she hadn’t trusted Callumkal’s motives. That hadn’t been an easy conversation.
It had been better before Moon and Stone had left; Kalam trusted Moon more than he did her.
Now Jade met his gaze and said, “We’ll find your father, Kalam. And Delin, and Bramble and Merit. I swear to you I’ll be standing with you when we find the Hians.”
Kalam looked away for an instant, to gather himself. He conquered the emotion, then said firmly, “I’ll tell Rorra. I need to give the crew their travel funds, buy supplies for the wind-ship. We have to hurry. I’ll send Sarandel to Niran and Diar at the air docks to tell them where to meet us—” He headed down the deck.
Jade faced Malachite, who looked out over the harbor, eyes narrowed. Jade had been around her enough not to take the lack of attention as an insult. Malachite was not a normal queen anymore than Moon was a normal consort. Malachite said, “Is there time for his preparations?”
Jade said, “I think so. It sounds as if the Kishan here underestimate him so much they think he’ll sit here on this boat and keep begging them for help.” She had never wanted to count on aid from Kish, the way Rorra and the other groundlings had. After the Hians’ betrayal, Jade hadn’t wanted to count on anything but her own warriors and the Golden Islanders, who were proven allies with their own stake in finding the Hians. “The sooner we can get away from here, the sooner we can catch up to Moon and Stone at the swampling port.”
Malachite tilted her head to eye her. “You expected me to object to that.”
Jade had been surprised when Malachite agreed to the plan; sending two consorts off alone to scout after murderous groundlings in strange territory was so unheard of as to be impossible for most Raksura to contemplate. Moon should be back at the colony with his clutch, guarded by warriors and Arbora. Stone, as a line-grandfather, had more license for his behavior, but Jade felt sure no one in any Raksuran court had ever contemplated this much license. But they didn’t have a choice.
Jade knew Moon had come to see Malachite as a powerful ally, but she still wasn’t sure how Malachite saw him. Their relationship was different from anything between a birthqueen and the only surviving consort of her last clutch ought to be. For most of his life Moon had thought his birthcourt had been wiped out. No, for most of his life Moon hadn’t had a clue that anything like a court existed, she reminded herself. Jade said, “It did surprise me, but then I don’t know what you think about anything, least of all my consort.”
Malachite moved her spines so slightly Jade wasn’t sure if it was indicating anything or they had been stirred by the breeze. “At the moment Moon’s experience is far more valuable than his ability to breed, and we do not have the luxury of pretending that he is anything other than what he is.”
Jade reminded herself that from Malachite that wasn’t an insult. She forced her spines and claws to relax, and made herself say, evenly, “I’m glad we’re in agreement on that.”
South of Gwalish Mar
Some distance outside the port city, Moon and Stone found a ruined statue that was so worn by weather and vines all you could see was that it had four legs and was crouching. Though the body was protected a little by the heavy growth of trees around it, the head was above the canopy and had worn down to a featureless ball. A cavity that had been knocked in its chest at some point made a good place to rest. It was padded with turns worth of palm leaves and rotting vegetation, and Moon was so exhausted he slept the rest of the night curled against Stone’s side.
He woke at dawn, and crawled out of their nest to sit on the edge of the cavity. The air was cool and damp, laced with the scent of the sea and the swampling city. Stone was still deeply asleep, and Moon felt bleary and half-conscious. It was a sure sign they were both short on food.
He wondered how close the others were, if they had reached the mainland yet, if they had gotten help from the Kish the way Kalam hoped. Every instinct said he and Stone were close behind the Hians, that they needed to keep moving. He hoped Jade didn’t regret sending them ahead.
Moon had spent the last night before they had left with Jade, Chime, and Balm, up on the roof of the wind-ship’s stern cabin. It held the ship’s cistern, and was far enough away from the steering cabin and the sleeping areas down in the hull for relative privacy. Not that Raksura in general cared much about privacy for sex, but Moon still did, and he had been around Golden Islanders and Jandera enough by now to know that they appreciated it too. It didn’t help that his mother was on this wind-ship somewhere, with Shade and Lithe and the rest of the warriors. Stone, at least, had snuck off down to the sunsailer to see Rorra.
It had been quiet then with not much movement except for the few warriors taking their turn at watch. Jade was sitting up, still in her Arbora form, looking into the distance as the wind pulled at her frills. Moon lay on his
side next to her, Chime pressed against his back and half wrapped around him, mostly asleep. Balm lay curled on Jade’s other side, dozing. Jade’s tail coiled around Moon’s arm, and he ran his fingers down the tiny frills along its length. He could tell her thoughts were weighing on her, and to distract her he said, “You can’t see land yet, can you?”
It was partly a joke; Rorra had calculated that they were still some distance from the coast.
Jade tilted her head toward him, but didn’t take her gaze off the dark horizon. “It’s a long way. Are you sure you don’t want to wait another day at least?”
Moon had recovered from the Fell poison and had had nothing to do but rest and reflect on all his mistakes as they made their way back toward Kish. The urge to go after the Hians had been burning in him, he couldn’t bear to wait another day. “I’m sure.” Because it was easier to blame it on Stone, he added, “It’s been hard enough convincing Stone to wait this long.”
Jade had bared her fangs. “I should never have let any of you come on this trip to begin with. Especially the Arbora.”
Balm’s eyes were open, her brow furrowed worriedly. From Jade’s tone, she was about to go back to the conversation they had already had many times, where Jade tried to take sole responsibility for everything that had gone wrong since they left the court. What made it worse was that it inevitably led to the other conversation, the one where they talked about what might be happening to Merit and Bramble. If Moon dwelled on that too much, the mix of fury and fear made it hard to think, let alone plan.
Moon nudged Chime gently until Chime woke enough to nip his ear and let him go, rolling over and sinking back into sleep. Moon released Jade’s tail and rolled over to nuzzle her hip.
Jade said, “I know you’re trying to distract me.”
It would be the last distraction until they found the Hians, so Moon had meant to make it count. Then Jade had growled and dragged him into her lap, and he had tried to make her forget everything that had gone wrong.
Now Moon missed her, and missed the others, in a way that felt like a knot of pain in his chest. He shook away the memories, then stretched, shifted, and leapt out of the cave to hunt.
He found a swampy stretch of water not far from the statue’s left rear foot. It was surrounded by ferns, and the deceptively still pool was filled with large armored lizards. He killed one, carried it back for Stone, and found it gone by the time he got back with a second one.
Moon ate the tail of the second lizard, left the rest for Stone, and went up on top of the statue’s head where shallow basins had formed and collected rainwater. He sat on his heels and started to clean the blood and flesh out of his claws.
The sky was clear with few clouds, and the wind was light but steady. He spotted a few flying boats in the distance, two leaving the city but another one coming in. It meant that for now at least there had been no Fell attack.
Stone’s big dark shape flew past. He circled around and dropped down onto the statue’s head, then shifted to groundling and wandered over to sit beside the puddle.
Moon watched the blood spiral through the water. “I’m guessing you don’t think we should wait for the others.”
Stone rolled one shoulder and scratched under his arm. “What, are you worried about what Jade will think?”
Moon gave him a glare. “Yes. That doesn’t mean I don’t think we should keep going.” Flying boats tended to take a direction and stick to it, not having to navigate around anything except mountains. If the boat hadn’t been cautious enough to change direction once it was out of sight of the city, they still had a good chance to catch it.
“If we hadn’t come ahead and found that moss on the berth, it would have dried out by the time the others got here. And there would have been nobody to tell us about the second Hian ship and the switch.” Stone squinted into the distance. “I don’t want to take a chance on missing something else.”
Moon took the waterskins out of his pack and started to fill them from a clean puddle. “We need to leave the Hian moss for the others. We can put it in a bundle with some of the moss they’re using to track us, and hide it in that hole we slept in, that should work.” He sat back on his heels, glancing around. “We need to mark the top of this statue to help them find it. Something that won’t draw attention if another flying boat spots it, but that they’ll know is from us. It can’t be writing, because the Fell might see it. And it can’t be anything that might get blown away by the wind—”
Stone said, “You sound like an Arbora.”
Moon knew this was Stone trying to start a fight to relieve tension. He shrugged his spines, knowing it would be more irritating than anything he could think of saying.
Arbora liked to talk and they liked to figure things out, which often meant their favorite pastime was to analyze every aspect of a situation from every angle. It also meant that they were very good at coming up with solutions to problems. Which was why Bramble and Merit, with Delin and finally Chime, had been able to discover the way into the foundation builder city.
Stone, faced with Moon’s refusal to argue, said, “Draw a flying boat on it.”
That . . . would work. Moon turned the fastener on the last waterskin and dug the inkstone and paper out of his pack. He handed it to Stone to write the message. After a couple of turns of intermittent study, Moon could read Raksuran well enough but his writing was terrible. They were going to need some rocks to scratch the drawing on the statue’s head. He tried not think about how Jade would react when she found out that not only had they flown ahead instead of waiting, but that a kethel from the Fellborn queen’s flight was following them.
By the time Moon came back with a rock that made a satisfactory dark scratch through the statue’s weathered coating, Stone had filled a page with the elegantly flowing oblongs of Raksuran writing. Stone made a bundle of it and the mosses in a cloth waterproofed with mountain-tree sap, then went down to hide it in the cave where they had slept. Moon’s drawing skills weren’t much better than his writing, but he got started with the rock.
When Stone returned, Moon said, “You think Bramble and Merit—” He hesitated, not wanting to finish that sentence. The Hians had taken them as hostages, but Moon had been afraid they would decide that since they had Merit, they didn’t need Bramble. He was also afraid Bramble would lose her temper, try to kill the Hians, and be killed herself. Or that the artifact would require some test to prove it would kill Fell, and the Hians might use it on Bramble or Merit or both of them. There were so many things to be afraid of at the moment he couldn’t pick just one.
“Bramble’s smart,” Stone said, handing Moon a fresh rock. “Just because she’s never had to use her brains for manipulating Hians doesn’t mean she can’t do it.”
“Manipulating,” Moon said, thinking about it. Vendoin, the Hian leader who had been plotting this apparently since she had first left Hia Iserae for the Kish-Jandera city of Kedmar to work with Callumkal, was a master manipulator. As Kalam had said, she had known him and his father for turns, since Kalam was a child. But they were Janderan and Bramble was a Raksura. More importantly, she was an Arbora. “Vendoin never did think any of us were that smart, did she.”
“No. She thought we were smart animals, not smart people.” Stone stood to survey Moon’s handiwork. He indicated the drawing with one toe. “What’s that?”
“That” was meant to be a fan-folded sail on a wind-ship’s central mast, except it looked nothing like the image in Moon’s head and he had no idea how to make it any better. He said, “Guess.”
Stone sighed, like Moon was the one being a problem. “Ready?”
Moon pushed to his feet and shouldered the pack. They were going south on the random word of a sleepy bladder-boat groundling, and their own theory that the Hians had switched flying boats to keep a Kish horticultural from tracking them. It was a risk, and they were gambling for the lives of their friends.
Stone walked to where the statue’s head started to curve do
wn, shifted, and leapt into the air. Just before Moon followed, he caught a hint of Fell stench in the wind, a reminder that they weren’t the only ones searching for the Hians.
CHAPTER FOUR
As they waited, stuck in their cage, Bramble considered Delin’s hint that she should pretend to be weak, and decided to give the Hians some proof of it. She would stop eating.
Merit wasn’t keen on it when she informed him of this decision, but mentors always thought they knew everything, particularly mentors who were younger than you. He said, “And if you just die, what then?”
“I won’t do it right away, that would be stupid.” Someone might connect it with Delin’s visit and suspect a trick. “I’ll eat less, gradually, each time they feed us. I don’t know if they’ll notice, but if I need to pretend to be sick later, it’ll add—” She waved a hand. “Verisimilitude.”
Merit sighed. He sat back against the mossy wall of their prison, small and tired. He had been trying to augur but had admitted that either the Fell poison was still interfering with his sight or the situation was so confused right now there was nothing to see. The scale pattern was fading from their skin, but slowly, and they still couldn’t shift. “Maybe I should do it instead.”
“They aren’t going to let you near them,” Bramble explained, almost patiently. “Vendoin saw too much of what you can do.”
“She saw you, too.” Merit sounded sulky, more like a fledgling warrior than an adult mentor. Bramble decided to save pointing that out for the moment when they needed a violent argument to clear the air.
“Vendoin saw me making sure everyone ate, and had clean bedding,” she explained. “She saw me putting up the tent. She saw me with you and Delin figuring out the way into the city, but she didn’t see how much I helped. That was bad, I shouldn’t have done that, but we didn’t know what she was then. At least she didn’t see it from close up. She thinks I’m a—” She lowered her voice, because the Raksuran language had no real word for this, and she didn’t know if Altanic did either. She said in Kedaic, “—servant.”