by Martha Wells
“Tempest, with five warriors,” Bell told him. “They didn’t stay long and we didn’t even get to see them. They met with Jade and Pearl and Heart up on the queens’ level.”
“They didn’t want to stay the night?” That definitely wasn’t good, at least from Moon’s limited understanding of relations between Raksuran courts. The visitors should have stayed at least until morning and there should have been a special meal for them, put together by the Arbora. And it was also odd that the only Arbora included in the meeting had been Heart; for the other visits, Bell, Bone, and Knell had been there to represent the Arbora castes. Bone had been away leading the hunt, but Bell and Knell were both here. “Uh…Were they not invited to stay?”
Bell’s expression was deeply worried. “I don’t know.”
“Right.” Moon looked up. The warriors wheeling around up in the central well all kept their distance from the queens’ level gallery, clearly not wanting to antagonize the occupants. “I’d better get up there.”
“Good luck,” Bell called after him, as Moon leapt up the wall.
Moon climbed rapidly. As he swung up onto the gallery of the highest warriors’ level, Vine landed beside him and clung to a claw-scarred pillar. Keeping his voice low, he said, “Moon, do you know what happened with the visit?”
“No, I just got back. Weren’t you there?” Vine had fallen a little out of favor with Pearl, but not with Jade, and Moon was surprised he had been left out.
“Nobody was. No warriors, I mean.” Vine glanced out into the well. “Not even River, and he’s not exactly thrilled about it.”
All right, that was odd. River had been Pearl’s favorite so long he thought he was a consort.
“See if you can get them to tell us what happened,” Vine urged as Moon moved away.
Moon ducked through an empty bower, out to an interior passage, then up the smaller stairwell that led past the queens’ level and to the consorts’ quarters. As he passed through the unused rooms, he couldn’t hear any disturbance from below. That might be a good sign. If Tempest had delivered some sort of insult or threat from Emerald Twilight, he thought Pearl would probably still be ranting about it.
The stairs opened into one of the smaller halls, the walls carved with scenes of Arbora building bridges between platforms in the suspended forest, the mountain-trees towering over them. Stone had told him that this hall was meant to be a private retiring room for consorts, where they could compose themselves before joining any gathering in the larger hall beyond. Moon had thought that sounded pointless, before he had found himself using the room for exactly that purpose when they had entertained visitors from other courts.
The round doorway led to a short turning passage only a few paces long, there to block any direct view from the queens’ main hall into the retiring room. It was also great for eavesdropping, to make sure you wanted to join any meeting in the hall before you committed yourself by walking into it, but Moon didn’t bother with that now.
Pearl, Jade, and Heart were still here, sitting around on cushions near the large metal bowl hearth. The hearth was filled with heating stones, and the best water kettle and the best tea set the court owned were out, along with a scatter of seating cushions for the absent visitors. So it looked like they had actually intended hospitality, whatever had happened.
And something had happened. Jade faced away from Moon so he couldn’t see her expression, but her spines were flared. Heart, in groundling form, seemed dispirited, and Pearl looked grim, her spines twitching in agitation.
As Moon stepped out of the doorway and shifted to his groundling form, Heart was saying, “I just don’t think we should—you should—worry before we know for certain. We don’t even know—”
Pearl spotted Moon and cut Heart off with a hiss. Startled, Heart lifted her head, saw Moon, and immediately looked guilty.
So I’m not supposed to know what happened, either, Moon thought, crossing the hall toward them. That was a little odd, though at least it meant that Emerald Twilight probably hadn’t declared war on them. He took a seat on the cushion next to Jade. She didn’t look up. Pearl stared at the hearth. Heart cleared her throat, and said, “How did the hunt go?”
“It was good.” Moon wondered how long they could keep this up. They had to know the others would have told him that Tempest had been here. “No trouble this time.”
An uneasy silence followed. It was so uneasy, Pearl stirred and asked, “Did you find the hopper herd Bone keeps talking about?”
Moon admitted, “No, but we found some big lopers.”
“Ah.” Pearl flicked her spines again, looked at Jade and looked away. “Just as well.”
Moon glanced at Jade, then took a good look. She was absolutely rigid with fury.
“Was it about Halcyon?” he blurted, before he realized that might not be the best thing to say at the moment. Halcyon was another sister queen of Emerald Twilight, Tempest’s clutchmate. She had attacked them on the way back from the forest coast, as part of a plot to get more power within Emerald Twilight, and Jade had had to fight her. Nothing that had happened afterward had been Indigo Cloud’s fault, but Moon had always wondered if Emerald Twilight really believed that.
Jade twitched at the name, then made an effort to unclench her claws. “No. No, it wasn’t about her.” Her voice was husky, strained. As if she had been snarling at someone, or trying not to.
“What was it about?” Really worried now, Moon put a hand on her wrist. Pearl watched them with a completely opaque expression. Heart hunched her shoulders slightly, as if braced for Jade’s response.
Jade let out her breath and forced her spines to relax. She managed an apologetic smile and reached over to squeeze Moon’s wrist. “It was about territory, they were just trying to push us, make us react. It was stupid; I let Tempest make me angry, we almost…” She added, “It was nothing.”
Moon hesitated. If he had had the slightest inclination to believe this, Pearl’s ironic expression and Heart’s furtive twitch would have squashed it. His first impulse was to think it was something about him, but he knew he was overly suspicious. Actually, overly suspicious was putting it mildly. And he couldn’t think what it would be, unless Tempest had tossed off some casual insult that had caught Jade at the wrong moment. Though that didn’t seem to fit Pearl’s reaction. Whatever it was, he had the feeling it wouldn’t help to press the point, at least not now.
And he could always get Chime to try to ease the truth out of Heart, later.
Moon said, “All right.” He added, “You should get something to eat.”
“I should,” Jade agreed. She tightened her grip on Moon’s wrist and stood, hauling him to his feet. She met Pearl’s gaze with a look of pure steel-eyed hate. “We’ll talk later.”
Pearl rippled her spines in a shrug, resigned and amused. “For all the good it will do.”
Over the next few days, Jade and Pearl continued to say nothing about what had happened during the meeting with Tempest. Chime reported that Heart refused absolutely to tell him or anyone else what had been said. When Chime had asked her the first few times, she had said only that the queens didn’t want her to discuss it. When he had kept asking she had growled at him that it was none of his damn business and if he asked her again she was going to rip his frills out. “You could ask Balm,” Moon had pointed out.
“You can ask Balm,” Chime had retorted. “She can’t kill you.”
Yes, Moon supposed asking Balm to violate Jade’s confidence wouldn’t go over well. If Jade had even told Balm what had happened. Moon gave up on ever knowing. Maybe it had been nothing, just an exchange of insults that both queens would eventually get over. And it was only a day later that something happened that put the whole incident right out of his mind.
One of the good things Moon had discovered was that teaching fledglings was acceptable work for consorts, and he thought he was fairly good at it. Though he would feel a lot better about his efforts if he could just get Bitter to fly.
Moon nudged Bitter with an elbow, nodding toward two young warriors as they dove past, their wings slanted back for maximum speed. “That doesn’t look like fun?” By this point, he already knew the answer; he just wanted Bitter to know he hadn’t given up asking.
Chewing on a piece of hard yellow fruit, Bitter just shook his head.
It had turned into another warm day, bright sunlight falling through the heavy canopy of leaves high above. Moon and Bitter sat out on one of the mountain-tree’s smaller branches, an expanse of rough gray wood twenty or so paces across. They had a good if oblique view of the giant knothole, the waterfall, and the multiple levels of garden platforms.
Bitter’s clutchmates, Frost and Thorn, fledgling queen and fledgling consort, flew in the waterfall’s spray, dipping and wheeling in the cool air currents off the rush of falling water. A few warriors were also in the air, most further out over the clearing formed by the tree’s giant canopy, some on watch, others just stretching their wings.
Bitter eyed all the fliers noncommittally. He was small for a fledging his age, his groundling form a thin little boy with dark bronze skin, dark hair, and grave eyes, dressed in a brown shirt and pants a little too big for him. He didn’t talk either, except in whispers to Frost and Thorn, but at least he could talk if he felt like it. He apparently didn’t feel like flying at all.
“You’re going to have to do it some time,” Moon pointed out. He didn’t want to press the issue, but it would have been nice to have a clue as to what the issue was. Bitter liked to fly with Moon, clinging to his chest, so it wasn’t a fear of height or fast motion. It had to have something to do with the destruction of the court of Sky Copper. Bitter, Frost, and Thorn were the only survivors, rescued from their Fell captors and brought to join the court of Indigo Cloud. It had been a traumatic and terrible event for the three fledglings, but Moon wasn’t sure how that had evolved into Bitter’s refusal to learn to fly.
Bitter leaned on Moon’s arm and sighed, apparently weary of Moon’s wrongheaded persistence on this point.
A large number of Arbora were out on the platforms, digging or weeding in the gardens, probably discussing their plans to clutch. Most were teachers or hunters, the ones in their groundling forms dressed for muddy work in cloth smocks or leather kilts. An Arbora had been making his way down the branch toward them for some time, collecting balls of moss fallen off the higher branches that could be dried and used in weaving. His scales were green faded to gray in large patches, and heavily scarred in spots. As he reached them, he said, “Hello, consort. Hello, little one.” It was Dash, a very old Arbora, who wasn’t doing particularly well in his old age. He had been ill in the various sicknesses that had plagued the old colony, and injured in fighting the Fell, and it had all taken a toll. He put his bag aside and sat down beside Moon and Bitter, grunting as his bones creaked. “Now, which one are you?” he asked Moon.
“Moon, Jade’s consort,” Moon reminded him. Dash remembered the distant past better than recent events, and he tended to confuse Moon with the long-gone consorts who had died or been sent away to other courts turns ago.
“Ah, that’s right, you’re new.” Dash stared downward, frowning. “What are they doing down there? In that pool.”
Moon leaned forward to look. A few hundred paces below, some Arbora were working on a small platform, close enough to the waterfall to be drenched by its spray. They were digging out an old drainage pool and channel that had been choked with dirt and weeds. Moon said, “Trying to get it working again. It’s probably got something to do with the blocked drains.”
The drains and water channels inside the tree had been one of the biggest problems in getting the colony livable again. The mountain-tree drew so much water up through its roots that it expelled it in springs. Some of it was discharged through the waterfall, but the channels carved through the tree also used it to fill the bathing pools and to flush out the latrines into the roots. But generations of disuse had left many of the channels clogged; there was a whole group of Arbora who had done nothing for all the past months except trace the channels throughout the enormous space and hunt down the obstructions. It was all they talked about, and everyone had learned to be careful which levels of the bowers to avoid if you didn’t want to hear about drains. And no one wanted to hear about drains.
Moon whistled sharply for Frost and Thorn to call them to the branch. They probably needed a nap by now, and he wanted to be able to make a quick escape if Dash wanted to talk about drains.
Frost and Thorn wheeled toward the branch and landed next to Dash. “We’re hungry,” Frost announced.
“Say hello to Dash,” Moon reminded her. The teachers had told him that fledgling queens could be difficult to raise, but Frost seemed to be taking that to an extreme. She had good days and bad days, and on the bad days she threw fits, she panicked the other young Arbora and Aeriat with wild claims, and was rude to an extent that had even managed to mildly shock Stone.
Much of Frost’s misbehavior had to come from the terrible experience of seeing her court destroyed. And if anyone should be able to understand that and handle her, it was Moon. At least, that was the theory, and she had been better since things had settled down in the court and he was able to spend more time with her. The trick seemed to be to get her to behave without squashing the natural aggression she would need to be a good queen.
Jade had also been visiting the fledglings frequently, though at first, Frost had regarded her with suspicion. Just what she was suspicious of, Moon didn’t have a clue. But recently, Frost had started to seem more curious than wary, watching Jade play with the young Arbora and other fledglings and occasionally joining in.
But this was apparently going to be a good day, because Frost said, “Hello, Dash,” obediently enough, and climbed into Dash’s lap by way of apology.
“Hello, Dash,” Thorn echoed, and added, “Frost is hungry; I’m not. I don’t want to go in yet.”
Thorn had been doing better than the other two, but he was also better at concealing his feelings. Being pretty good at concealing his feelings himself, Moon found it easy to tell, but he wasn’t certain anyone else had noticed.
“But did they check the underroots?” Dash asked, absently looping an arm around Frost and letting her settle in his lap, though his attention was still on the platform. His scaly brow knit in worry. “It doesn’t look stable to me.”
“It doesn’t?” Moon craned his neck to look down again. Maybe the near end of the platform was slumping a little. But several Arbora were occupied with digging out the channel, and another was at the opposite end of the dry pool, pulling dead vines out of the broken clay, and none seemed worried by it. Moon wondered if they could tell; the slump might not be noticeable unless you were viewing the platform from this angle. He decided to take the kids inside and then fly back over and let the Arbora know—
The Arbora who was digging out the vines yanked at a recalcitrant clump, throwing her entire body into it. The vines came loose in a spray of dirt and she sat down hard. A crack sounded from below, loud enough to startle the Arbora working on the nearby platforms. The nearest patrolling warriors abruptly veered toward the mountain-tree’s trunk.
The Arbora on the slumping platform froze in place, looking down. Then half the platform split off and crumbled away beneath their feet.
Dash made a strangled noise of horror and the fledglings squeaked in alarm. Several Arbora next to the wooden shaft of the drain outlet clung to the torn roots still attached to the branch, as chunks of the clay pool came apart under them. The nearest warriors dove for them, but the female on the far end of the platform flailed as the dirt dissolved around her. She made a wild grab for a big root, and for an instant it supported her, then it jerked loose and sent her tumbling down with the rest of the debris.
The warriors were close enough to get the others, but not her. Moon pushed Bitter and Thorn toward Dash. “Stay with him!” Then he shoved to his feet and dove headfirst off the
branch.
Plummeting through the air, Moon had to fight the urge to shift. But as he fell past the crumbling platform, it rained chunks of dirt, clay, and broken roots down on him; he couldn’t extend his wings in this debris. Without them, he might as well take advantage of his heavier groundling body to fall faster.
Far below the Arbora tried frantically not to fall faster, clawing at the mass of roots unraveling around her.
The last of the debris from above dropped away and Moon shifted. He snapped his wings out for two hard beats, stooping on the Arbora like prey on the wing, and snatched her out of the air. She keened in his ear as she grabbed him, but managed not to sink her claws through his scales. He caught movement above him and twisted instinctively, pulling his wings in. A hillock-sized clump of wood and dirt fell past, barely missing them.
Up by the fallen platform, Moon saw the warriors had retrieved the other Arbora from the platform. Good, they got them all. Watching helplessly while an Arbora fell to his or her death was not something Moon wanted to do, ever.
He twisted around and spread his wings again, angled them back to catch air and slow his fall. Turning the headlong plunge into a glide, he came around toward the waterfall, away from any more falling debris. “You all right?” he asked the Arbora. From her build and dark green scales, he thought she might be Plum, one of the younger hunters. But her face was buried against his chest and he couldn’t be sure.
She made a choking noise and nodded. Moon took another swing around, to check where the rest of the debris would fall. The Kek, groundlings who lived among mountain-tree roots, had a village beneath the tree, but it was on the far side of the trunk from here and further out. And the biggest chunks of wood and dirt were hitting the slope of the trunk and disintegrating; none of the debris would make it to the ground in big enough pieces to cause damage to any Kek who happened to be foraging below.