by Martha Wells
Steps moved down the corridor above and she hissed softly for silence, even though they had been speaking Raksuran. The steps drew closer, and Aldoan leaned over the opening to say in Altanic, “I have the medicine. Will you take it?”
Merit made a soundless snarl at the blatant misuse of the Altanic word “medicine.” Bramble lifted her brows at him. After a moment, he nodded reluctantly. She called up to Aldoan, “Yes, we’ll take it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Chime was in the big main cabin of Niran and Diar’s wind-ship, watching as Dranam the Janderi horticultural tried to find the Hians.
Dranam sat on the deck of the cabin, leaning over two open pottery containers of acrid fluid and the strands of moss growing inside them. A fabric map was spread on the floor and Chime crouched on the other side of it, with Lithe and Shade beside him. Niran, too impatient to sit down, leaned on the wall near the doorway.
Chime tried not to breathe too loudly and distract Dranam. Kalam had hired her at the port of isl-Maharat where they had left the sunsailer, and she wasn’t used to Raksura yet. Chime wasn’t certain Kalam had told her she would be traveling on a Golden Isles wind-ship with a group of shapeshifters. Before this, she probably hadn’t known what Raksura were, or that they, unlike Fell, didn’t eat groundlings. Chime wasn’t entirely sure she believed that now, despite how unafraid the Golden Islander crew was. But since she seemed to be trying as hard as she could to help them, maybe her personal beliefs didn’t matter.
Kalam and Rorra had come aboard the wind-ship, leaving the rest of the crew in the port to get transport back to Kish-Jandera. The plan was for Esankel and Rasal and the others to ask for help from the local leaders in Kedmar, who knew them and Callumkal and would hopefully be more inclined to listen to their story. It would be nice if that happened, but Chime wasn’t counting on it.
Dranam sat back, frowning at the first jar. To Chime’s eye she was almost identical to Kalam, with short curly hair and dark red-brown skin, except that she was a Janderi and therefore shorter and more thickly built. Her dark coat was open across her chest, revealing the four breasts that marked her as female. Dranam said, “I still can’t detect the Hian ship. The distance must be too great for the moss. But that at least tells us that it isn’t coming back toward the coast.” She traced a line on the map with one finger. “I think we should keep going south, the direction of the last clear sighting, until your scouts return with news.”
Niran stepped forward to look at the map. His golden brow furrowed and he didn’t look pleased, but then he seldom did, especially since finding out that his grandfather had been stolen. “A number of trading ports are marked along that coast. Some are built around foundation builder ruins, according to Kalam.”
Lithe’s expression was doubtful. “I think we need to look inland.”
Niran nodded absently, still studying the map. “Your guess is better than mine,” he admitted.
Shade asked, “The second fragment?”
Draman’s shoulders hunched in reflex, though Shade had spoken softly, and he was sitting there in his groundling form, slender and lovely, dressed in a plain blue shirt and pants. He looked more like a warrior than a consort, his only jewelry copper wristbands and an anklet. His skin was the pale white of a Fell ruler, but his eyes were green and his hair dark, and his sharp-featured profile was just enough like Moon’s to make Chime’s heart twist.
They shouldn’t have told her he was half-Fell, Chime thought, a little sourly. Rorra and Kalam seemed to have no fear of Shade, but then they had met him aboard the sunsailer when he had arrived with Malachite and their other rescuers, and had seen how he had helped care for the poisoned crew. They hadn’t had much time to think about the fact that Shade and Lithe’s mother was a Fell progenitor, and by the time they had, it must have seemed a minor consideration compared to everything else that had happened.
Lithe, whose groundling form had dark copper skin and a halo of dark hair, looked like nothing other than a small Arbora. Dranam didn’t seem quite as nervous around her. But then Lithe never shifted when the groundlings were around if she could help it, so Dranam might not fully realize Lithe was also a Raksura.
Dranam tapped a point on the map, and in a mostly steady voice, said, “That’s the sample the two . . . consorts took with them.” She stumbled over the Raksuran word. “It’s here, to the south of this port.”
At least Moon and Stone had a moss sample so Dranam could follow their progress. And find their bodies when they were killed by something, but Chime was trying not to think about that part. As a line-grandfather, Stone had traveled the Three Worlds on his own, and so had Moon. They were the best suited to the task. Keep telling yourself that, he thought sourly. Jade and Balm, and Malachite, had also gone off scouting in different directions, to follow sightings of flying boats supposedly crewed by Hians that had left isl-Maharat before them. Chime was left to sit here on the wind-ship with the others, nursing his frazzled nerves. “South of the port?” Niran asked. “Not at the port?”
“It’s not exact,” Chime reminded him. Niran had lived with Raksura long enough to understand how scrying and augury worked, but he kept wanting the horticultural direction-sensing to be as right as his magnetic stones were when they pointed south, and it just didn’t work like that.
“That’s right,” Dranam said, though Chime couldn’t tell if she appreciated the support or not. “The sample just gives us the direction. We won’t be sure of their position until they move a more significant distance, or we get closer.”
Lithe looked up at Niran. “We should keep going southwest, at least until we hear from Malachite and Jade.”
Niran grimaced, and tied his long white hair back up in his scarf. “This delay is frustrating. It gives Grandfather more time to annoy the Hians into killing him.”
Trying to be reassuring, Chime said, “Delin is very sneaky. And—I don’t mean that in a bad way. He just might be able to get away from the Hians on his own. Especially with Bramble and Merit to help him and Callumkal.”
Niran made a weary gesture. “Perhaps. I should be accustomed to worrying about him, but the waiting wears on me.” He sighed. “At least the lying carrion-eaters don’t know where we are either, yet.” The problem was, of course, that bringing that moss fragment aboard so that Dranam could try to pick up the track of the Hians’ flying boat meant the Hians could also pick up the track of the wind-ship.
Niran went along the passage to climb the steps to the steering cabin, as Dranam fastened the lids on the jars and got up to carry them back to the rack where they were stored. Helping her with that task just made her more nervous, so Chime sat back on his heels. He had nothing to do but wait. At least the warriors could guard the wind-ship and the Golden Islander crew could clean and tend it.
Lithe rubbed her face wearily, and Shade gave her a nudge to the shoulder. “Remember to rest, and eat,” he said. Like Merit, Lithe would scry herself unconscious if you let her. I hope Merit’s alive, Chime thought bleakly.
“I will,” Lithe promised. “As long as you do too.”
“I’ll make some tea,” Chime said, and got up to go to the wind-ship’s little heating hearth. It was set back in a cubby, a square metal box carefully insulated from the deck and walls by squares of thick polished stone. Though Chime knew just how hard it was to set a wind-ship on fire; the plant fiber that looked so much like wood was much tougher than it appeared. This main room was where the crew had their meals, and a long low table, stools, and seating cushions were pushed back against the far wall now to make it easier to spread out the big maps.
Chime found the pack where the Raksuran tea was kept and filled the Islander’s oddly-shaped version of a kettle from the water cask. Shade got up to fish the embossed metal cups out of the storage chest, though as a consort he wasn’t supposed to do little tasks. Or do anything, really. Chime hesitated, not feeling he knew Shade well enough to tell him not to. Then Flicker arrived, shouldered Shade aside and gathered up the cups. Shade
complained, “There’s no one here to see. It’s like being at home.”
Flicker frowned at him. “Go sit down.”
Amused, Lithe patted the mat beside her, and Shade stamped over and dropped down to sit like an annoyed fledgling.
Flicker gave Chime a sideways look, as if gauging his reaction. Keeping his voice low, Chime said sympathetically, “Moon isn’t good at being a consort, either.”
An instant later he regretted it, realizing Flicker could take it as an insult. He felt as if he had shoved his whole tail into his mouth. But Flicker nodded in relief and said, “It’s important for him to follow etiquette, when we’re away from the court. Because if he doesn’t act like a consort then someone might . . . You know.”
Someone might not treat him like one, Chime finished. It was even more important for Shade than it was for Moon. Insults bothered Moon more than he liked to admit, but he was so practiced at dealing with them it was hard to tell. Shade, gently raised but without Moon’s impeccable bloodline, shouldn’t have to deal with it at all.
Chime filled the cups with Flicker’s help, and they carried them over to Shade and Lithe. Once Chime was seated, holding the fragrant cup under his nose, Shade said, hesitantly, “You haven’t sensed anything? Like you do sometimes?”
Chime didn’t wince. The warriors kept asking this question, though Shade managed to make his inquiry sound wistful rather than as if Chime was failing as a . . . as whatever Chime was now. “No. I’ve tried but . . . It’s never been a matter of trying, if that makes sense. It just happens, usually around groundling magic.”
Flicker asked carefully, “So that’s really true, about you? That you were born an Arbora?”
“It’s true,” Chime said and shrugged helplessly. At the old eastern colony, Chime had shifted one morning and found himself a warrior. He had lost all the mentor skills, the ability to heal and augur, to produce heat and light out of minerals and plants. But he had also gained some odd sensory abilities. It was a strange situation that Indigo Cloud had mostly become accustomed to over the past few turns, but it was hard to explain to other courts. It was almost impossible to explain it to groundlings, who usually found Raksura difficult to cope with or understand. Shade, who must have been in the position occasionally of being difficult to explain, just nodded glumly.
“It’s a colony response to disease, a drop in Aeriat births, lack of food, other bad influences.” Lithe took a drink of tea and gave Chime a sympathetic smile. “It’s natural, just very uncommon.”
Then Lien, one of the Golden Islander crew, leaned her head in the door and said, “Jade and Balm are returning! The lookouts just spotted them!”
Jade and Balm had been flying all night, stopping only for brief rests. The morning had dawned clear and now they flew over low hills, covered with some unpleasantly spiky and thorny vegetation, punctuated by tall clumps of multicolored fungi and ferns. The only visible sign of groundling habitation was the occasional canal, constructed of wide stone troughs standing on pylons just above the vegetation. Some had been damaged, the flowing water leaking out through holes and cracks, or blocked by debris. A few were whole, the water unimpeded. On one Jade had seen a small groundling boat with sails, traveling down it like a caravan on one of the raised stone roads to the east.
It would have been an easier flight if they had been returning with good news, but at least they had bitter impatience to spur them on.
“If Malachite didn’t find them either,” Balm said, as they shared a waterskin at a rest stop on a bare hill, “that means Moon and Stone are going the right direction.” Balm had probably kept Jade from flying herself to death; in Jade’s current mood, she wouldn’t have heeded the signs of weakness from her own body, but she didn’t want to hurt Balm. Queens could fly faster than warriors, even the strongest female warriors, but with two of them, they could take turns sleeping and hunting, a much more practical way to travel and better suited to the effort of such a long sustained flight. “That’s reassuring.”
“That’s terrifying,” Jade corrected. She was tired and her mood was sour. As a line-grandfather, Stone was supposed to be the sensible one, though the idea of Stone preventing Moon from doing anything rash was hilarious if you knew either of them. “They’re bad enough on their own. Together they’re worse than Malachite.”
Balm snorted a laugh, and then had to wipe water off her face. She was wearing her groundling form to rest, and Jade could clearly see her bloodline resemblance to their birthqueen, Pearl. Queens never gave up their fangs and claws and the closest they could get to a groundling form was a softer version of the Arbora’s scaled form, but Pearl’s features were echoed in the sharpness of Balm’s profile. Balm’s groundling skin was a dark bronze, her hair a dark honey color, and like all Raksuran warriors she was tall and all lean muscle. Jade had always wondered if Balm was what she would have looked like if she had been born a warrior. Shaking the water droplets off her hand, Balm said, “If Malachite finds the Hians, she won’t wait for us.”
“We’re lucky Malachite acknowledges that I exist.” Jade sighed in exasperation, pushed to her feet, and held out a hand to Balm. “Let’s go.”
By the time Jade and Balm circled down to land on the wind-ship, Chime, with Kalam, Rorra, and Niran, stood on the bow deck, watching impatiently. Root, Briar, and River perched up on the nearest cabin roof. The Opal Night warriors, waiting for Malachite’s return, gathered towards the stern, with one sitting up atop the mast in the look-out’s basket.
“Well?” Chime said as Jade lit on the railing. “Were we right?” Root hopped down from the cabin roof, his spines twitching with impatience.
“No.” Jade furled her wings and hopped down to the deck, as Balm landed a few paces away. “We were right about the flying boat with Hian traders heading northeast, but we were able to get close enough to see the crew were all other species. It wasn’t Vendoin.”
Kalam looked away, out over the plain, controlling any reaction. Niran swore. Rorra, more practical, just unfolded the wooden plates of a map. She said, “Malachite isn’t back yet, but Lithe says the signs are still pointing strongly toward the southwest. It’s suggestive that Dranam tracked Moon and Stone moving south of the port.”
Jade felt frustration spike her as if she had flown into a thorn tree. Moon and Stone had agreed to wait if they found anything, or if they lost the trail. But had she really expected them to abide by that? Or had she counted on them to disobey her and rescue the Arbora, so she could still look like a proper queen who would never send consorts into danger?
“If Moon and Stone find them, will they try to follow on their own?” Kalam asked, turning to face Jade.
More angry at herself than anyone else, Jade controlled her spines and said, honestly, “I would like to believe that if they pick up the Hians’ trail, they’ll wait for us. But knowing them, they may follow the Hians and take the first opportunity to rescue the others.”
Kalam nodded, almost trembling with nervous anxiety. Niran put a hand on his shoulder and steered him down the deck. “Come and help me tell Diar the news. She can’t leave the steering mechanism and if she has to wait much longer she will turn furious.”
Kalam went without protest, though it was clearly more an opportunity for Kalam to conquer his emotions in private than to appease Diar, who was as calm under adversity as her grandfather Delin.
Rorra looked from Jade to Chime, who was still bouncing impatiently. She said, “I’ll get the other map,” and followed Niran and Kalam away.
Rorra was right, Kalam and Niran weren’t the only ones disappointed at the lack of news. Chime said, anxiously, “You think Moon and Stone are following the Hians.”
“They know to be careful,” Jade said. They knew to be careful; whether they actually would or not was another question. Jade saw Balm lean heavily on the railing and told her, “Go in and get some rest.”
“I know you don’t think you do, but you actually need rest too,” Balm told her, but pushe
d off the railing and started down the deck. “I just wish this boat could move faster.”
Standing by the cabin door, his spines drooping as he watched them, Root said, “I don’t understand why we can’t push it.”
Chime grimaced and said, “It. Doesn’t. Work. Like. That.” His voice was tense with barely contained irritation.
Jade suppressed a spine lift of exasperation. Obviously, while she and Balm had been absent, the other warriors hadn’t been handling the tension very well.
“You know, just let him try.” That, unexpectedly, was River. He jumped down from the cabin roof to take Root’s wrist and pull him toward the stern of the boat. “Come on, let’s go to the back and you can push on the boat.”
It made Jade think about poor Branch, River’s clutchmate, who had been killed by the Fell just before the attack on Indigo Cloud’s old eastern colony. Maybe River could help Root deal with Song’s death. She said, “Briar, go with them and make sure River doesn’t hurt himself.” The scars of the deep claw slashes that had cut through his scales were healing but still visible.
Briar, perched on the roof of the steering cabin, uncoiled and dropped to the deck to follow River and Root. Her spines drooped. Briar was another one who thought this was all her fault, but she had reacted with depression instead of anger. Jade thought, I should have sent her and Chime off with Moon and Stone. Then they’d be so busy trying to keep up they wouldn’t have any time to think. Mostly at the moment she wished she didn’t have any time to think, particularly about whatever Moon and Stone were doing, what might be happening to Bramble and Merit, and to Delin and Callumkal. With the other warriors out of earshot, she said, “Chime. Take a deep breath.”
“I know.” Chime was in his groundling form, probably because he understood all too well just how dangerously tense he was. He buried his hands in his hair and groaned. “I know they’re afraid and worried. I just can’t . . . listen to it anymore.”
Jade squeezed his wrist. “It’ll be all right.”