by Martha Wells
Let’s see how much damage I can do before they catch me, Bramble thought, and crept up the corridor.
After Moon made a couple of brief experiments, it became obvious that a number of the insect-lizards liked the bug paste enough to follow it anywhere. Fortunately they were indifferent to Raksura in either form, and didn’t seem to notice Moon or Stone except to zip out of their way at the last instant. They were only about as long as Moon’s forearm, and their mouths were small furry scoops meant for inhaling small bugs, but there were hundreds of them and in combination their tiny sharp claws could have done some damage had they been so inclined.
Watching their preparations in the gathering darkness, the kethel followed Moon and Stone down to the valley. Plowing through the high grass behind them in its groundling form, it asked, “What do I do?”
“Stay back and don’t eat anybody,” Stone told it.
It didn’t seem satisfied with that, but didn’t object.
Once night settled over the valley, Moon took flight toward the Hians’ boat. He carried Stone in his groundling form, and Stone carried the packet of paste.
A cloud of the insect-lizards followed them up and over the rocks toward the beach, their buzz and whir a dull roar easily covering the sound of Moon’s wingbeats.
The bright beams of the distance-lights were created by the same moss that kept the boat aloft and made the Kishan’s other tools work. The two lights on the starboard side moved in slow patterns over the cliffs and beach, and the two on the port side crossed the sky, watching for anything approaching by air.
Moon had memorized the pattern earlier, and went down the cliff face to the beach in a series of controlled drops, careful not to outpace their insect escort. He and Stone huddled behind a rock at the edge of the beach as the cloud clustered around them, and one insect-lizard landed on Moon’s head. The boat’s distance-light passed over them, then hesitated and returned. Stone, jammed between Moon and the rock, breathed, “Don’t move.”
Moon managed not to, even with the damn insect nuzzling one of his frills. The light made the cloud buzz around even more wildly. Then the beam moved on, the two Raksura hidden by dark rock and silver sand and the flitter of hundreds of iridescent wings.
One distance-light moved down the beach and the other swept over the waves. Moon tightened his hold on Stone and leapt into the air.
That created a vulnerable moment when the rush of air from his wings caused the insects to drop back, but they caught up with him again.
Moon had gauged his angle of approach carefully, and came up under the flying boat’s stern. As the next roving distance-light swept past it caught only the cloud of insects trailing him.
Stone was strong enough to hold on to Moon’s collar flanges without help, so Moon had both hands free to catch hold of the thick wiry moss of the boat’s hull. The boat was stable in the air, and the moss absorbed sound and vibration, so he knew no one had felt his landing.
Stone freed one hand to carefully smear the packet of paste onto the moss, then Moon climbed up the hull away from the now very excited cluster of insects. He stopped well below the boat’s rail, and Stone swung around to grip the moss. It made Moon nervous; Stone’s groundling form was strong, but it wasn’t as if he had claws. “You’ve got it?” he said, keeping his voice below a bare whisper.
“Yeah, go.” Stone started to haul himself up the hull toward the rail.
Moon climbed away toward the bow. He heard a couple of Hians move along the deck, but their steps weren’t hurried.
The steering cabin on this boat was in the center section, lifted above the hull to look down on the bow deck, with two levels of wide windows. One small distance-light lit the bow.
The idea was for Moon to look for the prisoners in the front part of the boat and Stone the back, and Moon hung just below the railing, trying to decide how best to get into the cabins. There were no windows in the lower hull, like there had been on Callumkal’s flying boat. He sensed movement on the deck and realized he had come too far forward. He swung sideways, then hissed as a flash of bright light blinded him.
Above, someone called out in alarm and more voices echoed her. Moon’s luck had just run out. He could have dropped off the boat but getting back up to it without the insect-lizard cloud as cover would be impossible; Stone would be on his own.
Moon made the decision in a heartbeat. If he couldn’t help search for the prisoners, he could provide a distraction.
He swung over the railing, shifted in mid-motion, and landed as a groundling in the center of the light on the open deck. As he stood up out of a crouch he heard shouts and startled footsteps outside the circle of illumination. He could just make out the open galleries on either side of the raised steering cabin that would make good vantage points for the Hians. If someone shot him with a fire weapon, this was going to be a short distraction. The weapons had to shoot a small wooden disk first, that allowed the fire to find its target, so Moon would have some warning. If they used the artifact weapon on him, he suspected there would be no warning at all.
Then from somewhere above him, Vendoin’s voice spoke in Altanic, “Moon. I didn’t expect to see you. I assume the others are with you?”
“I thought you assumed the Fell ate us?” Moon replied in the same language. He placed her location in the steering cabin near a side window or door.
“The moss told us the sunsailer reached the shallows. The others are with you, then?” There was a trace of what might be impatience in her voice. Maybe she didn’t want to talk about the chaos of her retreat from the sunsailer.
“They sent me ahead to talk.” He knew she wouldn’t believe that he was alone, so there was no point in trying to convince her of it.
“That seems unlikely, to me. I know how your queen prizes you.”
Moon bared his teeth briefly. “Well, you never really knew us at all, did you. Just like we never knew you.”
The silence lasted a beat longer than Moon expected. “So what did your queen send you to say?”
“You didn’t talk to the Bikuru who lived near the Hian scholar in the river trade town. They had her maps and writing. Now we have them.” If his and Stone’s theory was wrong, and Vendoin had been able to find whatever she had wanted in the scholar’s house, this was probably the point where Moon would get burned alive.
This time the silence stretched. The lights had drawn swarms of tiny nightbugs, and the insect-lizards from the mounds zipped around just out of range of the illumination. The air was humid and sweat stuck Moon’s shirt to his back. His night vision was ruined by the lights, but he tracked the position of the armed Hians watching him from the deck and the platforms off the cabin above by their breathing and the way their bodies blocked the breeze.
Then a door opened in the side of the steering cabin. Vendoin’s voice said, “Do not move, Moon. I would dislike killing you.”
Moon snorted in derisive amusement. A group of Hians moved out onto the gallery, into the light. Moon had never seen so many handheld fire weapons, even when the Fell had attacked the sunsailer. He recognized Bemadin first, then Vendoin. Then his attention was riveted by the scent of nervous Raksura, and two more Hians dragged Merit forward.
He was in his groundling form. From the way his eyes blinked and his captors seemed to be holding him upright, Moon knew the damp patches on the front of his shirt must be Fell poison, recently forced down his throat. He couldn’t see the scale pattern on Merit’s skin, but the play of light and shadows might conceal it.
Merit trembled, watching Moon with wide eyes. Moon said, “Bramble, Delin, and Callumkal?”
“All alive and well,” Vendoin said, before Merit could answer. “Please speak only Altanic. If you speak to each other in your own language I will have Merit killed.”
So Bramble and the others were alive, but maybe not so well. In Altanic, Moon said, “Merit, are you and the others all right?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was hesitant and a little hus
ky. “I don’t know where Bramble is. I haven’t seen Delin in—”
Vendoin interrupted, “That’s enough.”
Moon suppressed a snarl. He hoped that meant they had been held separately on the flying boat, and not that Bramble was dead.
Vendoin said, “Of course you don’t have these hypothetical maps and papers with you?”
“Hypothetical?” Moon wondered if this was an attempt to test him. He thought the fact that no one had tried to take him prisoner yet was a good sign. “If you didn’t want the scholar’s writing why did you stop there to kill her?” He heard Bemadin’s sharp breath, and other Hians glanced at Vendoin. He added, “Did you have to kill everyone in the house? The kids, too?”
Her voice tight and harsh, Vendoin said, “We did not kill them.”
Another Hian moved uneasily, something uncertain in her body language. This was obviously a topic of some dismay among them. Either there had been disagreement over whether to kill the scholar or not, or . . . Maybe her and her children’s deaths had been an accident, somehow. “They were pretty dead when we saw them,” Moon said.
“It was unintentional,” another Hian said. The Hian added, “I am Lavinat. You speak for the Raksura?”
“I speak for the Indigo Cloud Court, and the families of Delin-Evran-lindel of the Golden Isles and Callumkal of Kish-Jandera.” It might help to remind the other Hians that it wasn’t just them against the savage Raksura. “How do you unintentionally kill a whole house full of groundlings?”
Vendoin tried to answer and Lavinat spoke over her, “It was the weapon. I assume you know all about it.”
Something about Lavinat made Moon wonder if it was still Vendoin who was in charge here. “I know it kills Fell. If that’s what you want to do with it, it’s none of our concern.”
Her voice low, Bemadin said in Kedaic, “Don’t bargain with him. They will kill us.”
Vendoin ignored her. “Where are the papers you took from the scholar’s home?”
“Her friend’s home, the Bikuru,” Moon corrected. He knew the Hians must have searched the scholar’s house. “Stone has them.”
Vendoin didn’t seem surprised. “He will give them to us in exchange for you.”
“Or you could use the weapon and take them off his body,” Moon said.
Vendoin said, “We prefer not to waste the weapon.”
Then Lavinat stepped forward. “You haven’t asked us to release our captives yet. I find that very strange, that you stand here and bargain. As if you are waiting for something to happen.”
There was a murmur of confusion from the other Hians.
Moon tilted his head. Lavinat was clever. That could be a problem. Footsteps ran frantically down a corridor somewhere behind the cabin, so it was time to end the conversation anyway. Bemadin glanced at Lavinat, and said, “What does that mean?”
Lavinat said, “It means he’s trying to distract us.”
Moon flung himself backward and shifted in one motion. Someone shouted and he bounced up off the bow deck just as the wooden disks from fire weapons landed beneath him. The fault of the weapon was that once the disk was fired, the wielder couldn’t change the aim. Fire splashed on the deck, rippling across the soft surface as Moon landed on the platform next to the steering cabin. The Hians had already fled back inside, dragging Merit with them. Two armed with fire weapons still stood on the platform. Moon slammed one off, caught the other by the throat, ripped the weapon out of her hands, and tossed her over the side. Then he swung up on top of the cabin roof before any of the Hians inside had a chance to shoot at him.
The tricky part was not giving them time to threaten to kill Merit. Though shooting Merit without injuring any of the Hians near him would have been difficult anyway, as even the small fire weapons had never been meant for close quarters fighting.
Moon rolled across the cabin roof and braced himself on the edge. From here he had a view down into the open cubby against the boat’s starboard side, the one that housed the distance-light and the large fire weapon, big enough to repel major kethel. The two Hians at the station looked outward, expecting another attack from the air.
Peripherally aware that a Hian had climbed to the top of a cabin toward the stern and was aiming another bulky fire weapon at him, Moon fit his claw into the first trigger of his stolen weapon and pulled. Wooden disks shot out of the nozzle and landed in the mossy material of the cubby, and on the big fire weapon. The two Hians looked up in horror as Moon hit the second trigger and fire streamed out.
Moon rolled away as the large fire weapon thumped and the whole boat jerked sideways, like a giant fist had punched it. You can’t let them hit each other, a groundling had told him turns ago, on a trade road within the Kish border, when he had asked why the weapons guarding the camp were spaced so far apart, nothing else can catch one on fire. As the boat swung around, the Hian taking aim at him from the other cabin roof staggered and fell. She struck a lower platform railing before vanishing into the darkness on the port side.
Moon rolled back as smoke poured out of the hull. The cubby now hung sideways, connected only by a few broken stem-beams, and the steering cabin windows on that side were shattered. The two Hians in the cubby, their weapon, and the distance-light were nowhere to be seen. He shoved up to a crouch and by pure luck avoided a scatter of wooden disks that hit the spot where he had been lying. He grabbed the top frame of the broken window and swung around to flip himself through.
Moon landed on the steering cabin floor to see the Hians inside either ducking for cover or staring out the starboard window at what remained of the firing cubby. Merit huddled in the back corner, two Hians atop him, though Moon wasn’t sure if they were pinning him there or had fallen on him when the weapon exploded.
He grabbed one by the shoulder and the other by the neck and flung them into the group on the far side of the cabin. In his peripheral vision he caught sight of Lavinat crumpled at the base of the wall, but he didn’t see Vendoin. He snatched a fallen fire weapon from the floor as Merit flailed to stand. Then he grabbed Merit up and slammed through the door into the inner corridor.
Bramble had to cram herself into a storage cubby not much bigger than her body to hide from the searching Hians, but finally they moved on. She squirmed out, crept back down the stairwell and to the corridor where their cage was.
But when she reached it, it was unguarded and empty. They moved Merit, she thought, obviously, you idiot, and resisted the urge to rip at the walls. They would be using him as a hostage against her.
She went forward, back to where Delin’s cage was. Maybe in the confusion he had been left with only one or two Hians to watch him. But she heard voices in the corridor ahead and hurriedly dropped down a narrow set of stairs. She found herself in a cramped, low-ceilinged corridor, with ceramic containers on either side that stunk so strongly of moss it blotted our every other scent.
She was trapped there for a little time, as Hians crossed back and forth through the stairwell just above. She hissed silently to herself, seething. The poison in the water was not working as quickly as she had hoped.
Then suddenly the whole boat bucked under her feet. Her shoulder hit a container and she bounced off and rolled on the floor. In the stairwell, Hians shouted in dismay and alarm, and their steps pounded away.
Bramble scrambled to her feet and climbed the stairs. The foyer and the connecting corridors were empty now, but she hesitated, unsure which way to go next. She heard a shout from her left and turned right to bolt down that corridor. A Hian shouted again from behind her and she heard the distinctive cough of a fire weapon.
Bramble dove forward and the disks hit the floor, but as she rolled away she caught sight of one stuck to her arm. Horrified, she clawed it off. The Hian strode forward, lifting the weapon.
Then something gray grabbed the Hian from behind. Bramble heard the snap as the Hian’s neck broke before the limp body dropped to the floor. And she found herself staring at Stone.
All t
he breath left Bramble’s body in a startled whoosh. His clothes were worn and stained and he smelled like dirt and sweat and home, and she thought she was hallucinating.
Delin peered out from behind him. His eyes were wild but determined. He whispered, “Bramble, we’re escaping!”
Stone hissed, “Bramble, get over here!”
She shoved to her feet, staggered, and flung herself at Stone. He caught her, squeezed her briefly, and set her on her feet. “What— How—” she tried to ask. “You found us!”
“Now come on,” he said, and he sounded just the way he always did, as if she was a baby playing too long in the nurseries and delaying a meal.
Light-headed with relief, Bramble caught Delin’s wrist and followed Stone.
Moon dove down a stairwell and slammed aside two Hians at the bottom. This was an interior corridor with tightly woven moss walls, stem-like beams arching overhead, and light coming from gelatinous globes filled with glowing fluid mounted in ridges in the ceiling.
Merit clutched his collar flanges, gasping, “Moon, Bramble got away, she’s somewhere in the boat, that’s why they brought me up here, to threaten to kill me so they could catch her, but they couldn’t find her— Delin is locked up somewhere—I don’t know where Callumkal is—”
“Stone’s here, looking for them,” Moon told him. Shouting sounded from all directions and the stink of burned moss filled the air. He lifted the weapon and pointed it toward the end of the corridor and the steering cabin, then hit the first trigger to spray wooden disks. The second trigger sent fire streaming after them. It wasn’t as good as a big fire weapon; the moss didn’t seem to catch but singeing it filled the corridor with acrid smoke.
Merit clinging to him, Moon took the next cross corridor and slammed through the hatch at the end, out onto another platform. Moon turned to trigger the weapon again, aiming back through the hatchway. The burst of fire filled that corridor with smoke. He tried it again, but no more wooden disks came out.