by Martha Wells
It was a relief when he finally felt the sun lift into dawn. He got up and took advantage of the bathing room while Tempest and the warriors were still stirring. It was big enough for three or four times their number, with small pools fed by streams of water channeled down the stone walls, drapes of vines and the pillar-size roots winding between them. Moon picked a pool that had warming stones in it and took his first real bath since they had left Viridian Sea, using a soap that smelled faintly of unfamiliar flowers. He changed into the spare clothes he had brought, which had managed to stay mostly dry in his pack, and washed the others.
When he went back to the main room, the Arbora who had come to the door with Rise had returned, bringing tea and plates of fruit and flatbread. They didn’t stare at Moon the way they had last night, but he caught a few sideways looks from the younger ones.
“Is the daughter queen returned yet?” Beacon asked the older female, who was putting a kettle onto the warming stones of the hearth.
“She should be back sometime today,” the Arbora said, getting to her feet. “We thought she would come last night, but she must have decided not to fly in the storm.” She threw a quick opaque glance at Moon. “I know she would want to be here.”
“Did any visitors come last night, after we arrived?” The question was out before Moon realized he was going to ask it.
The Arbora blinked, surprised, but said readily, “No, no one’s come except you.”
Moon looked away. He hadn’t really expected a different answer.
Tempest sat on one of the benches, her tail folded neatly around her feet, watching them. She had slept in her Arbora form, but had put on her winged form again for the visitors. She said, “I want to see one of the queens, it doesn’t matter which.”
Her tone had an edge to it, and the Arbora woman looked up, startled. The younger Arbora, waiting beside the door, twitched uneasily, the silk of their robes whispering. Beacon folded her arms and seemed unmoved, but the other warriors radiated discomfort.
Tempest was treading a fine line, risking rudeness to the Arbora and an insult to Opal Night. She kept her spines down, but didn’t soften her voice. She said, “We have long days of travel to return to our court, and I’m anxious to discharge this burden. Will you take that message to your queen, whichever one is most concerned?”
This burden, Moon thought, his mouth twisting sardonically. He tried not to feel rejected by the comment. It wasn’t as if he was fond of Tempest.
The Arbora got to her feet. Moon judged her age as well into maturity, but not near the point where the dark bronze sheen of her skin would begin to gray. Her dark hair was straight and her face round, her features pleasant. She looked Tempest right in the eye and said, “My name is Russet, teacher of Opal Night. I’ll tell our queen what you’ve said, and how you speak of the consort you’re supposedly protecting.”
Moon blinked, caught off guard. Even Tempest looked more surprised than offended.
Arbora had a higher status within the court than warriors, but seeing one actually confront a queen was rare.
Beacon and the other warriors looked equally taken aback. Tempest said, slowly, incredulously, as if she couldn’t believe she was having this conversation, “I meant no disrespect toward the consort.”
Russet’s eyes narrowed. Obviously unconvinced, she inclined her head stiffly to Tempest and walked out, the younger Arbora in the doorway scattering before her.
Tempest sighed, and lowered her brows to give Moon a look that suggested that this was clearly his fault. Moon hissed at her and headed for the back of the main chamber. As he passed Dart, he heard the warrior mutter to Gust, “They’re not going to invite us to eat with them, are they?”
Moon went to stand in front of the opening into the central well. The huge space was lit from high above, the shafts of morning light making the green drapes of vine darker and glinting off the mist from the waterfall. He could see garden terraces a few hundred paces below this level, all heavily planted with bushes, small trees, vines, berry brambles, and the green leafy plants that usually meant belowground root vegetables. The reservoir that caught the waterfall runoff was lined with flat gray stones. Several Arbora walked along it, some of them pausing to pull up basket traps that might be for fish or crustaceans.
Russet’s reaction had confused him. But then Russet was just one Arbora, doing what Arbora did best and reminding the Aeriat to follow their own rules.
Vines rustled as Tempest moved up behind him. Moon felt the back of his neck itch with her proximity, but he didn’t shift. She said, “If they don’t send someone to greet me before the sun reaches noon, we’re leaving.”
Moon’s breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t considered this, that Opal Night’s failure to greet Tempest might negate the whole arrangement. If Tempest took him back to Indigo Cloud, they couldn’t refuse to accept him, could they? If they weren’t all dead, if Jade hadn’t run into disaster on her way here. He said, carefully keeping his voice neutral, “‘We?’”
“Not you,” she said, her voice dry. “If Indigo Cloud refuses to take you back, I’m not getting stuck with you.”
Moon’s whole body went tight, as if somebody had punched him in the heart. Jade’s not coming. Tempest knows she’s not coming.
He flung himself away from the wall, shoved past Tempest, and slammed across the room to the bench where he had left his pack. He didn’t realize he had shifted until he reached for the worn leather and saw the black scales and fully extended claws.
He started for the door and Tempest came from overhead, bounced off a root pillar and landed in front of him. She demanded, “What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving.” You would think it was obvious.
“What? You can’t—” She hissed in disbelief, then said, “Moon, that was a joke.”
Moon lashed his tail, frustrated, furious. It struck him then, the difference between what she had said and what he had somehow heard. But he was too angry for that to make much of a difference. “Get out of my way.”
She growled in exasperation. “You can’t go back to Indigo Cloud! They can’t take you in unless Opal Night formally gives you up—”
“I know that!” He meant to say the words but they came out as a snarl of rage so loud the watching warriors flinched. He hissed in a breath, and forced his voice down to the normal range. “Get out of my way.”
Behind him, stupid Dart said, “He wouldn’t really go solitary—”
“He is a solitary, idiot,” Streak told him. “That’s why this queen doesn’t want him.”
Beacon hissed at them. “Shut up.”
Tempest watched him intently. She knew he was serious now. She thought he was crazy, but she knew he meant every word. She said, “You know I have to stop you.”
Moon could feel her trying to force him to shift to groundling, but that was much harder to do when he was already in this form. Pearl hadn’t been able to make him shift, and Tempest wasn’t nearly so strong. He showed his front row of fangs. “So stop me.”
She grimaced in disbelief. “You won’t fight a queen.”
There was an idea. Fighting to the death with Tempest would solve all his problems. He sneered, “That’s what your dead sister thought.”
Tempest hit him in pure reflex, a backhanded blow that rocked Moon back even though he had been prepared for it. He didn’t give her a chance to think twice. He dropped to grab the kettle from the hearth and flung it into her face. She ducked, the ceramic shattered against the stone doorframe, and she charged him. He fell back, used her own momentum to flip her over his head. She tumbled but rolled to her feet, braced to lunge at him.
The ear-shattering roar from the corridor startled Tempest into bouncing backward and sent Moon leaping up to sink his claws into the wall. The scattered warriors all shifted to groundling and huddled in place.
The consort who stepped into the room was in his winged form, a full head taller than Moon and broader in the shoulders and chest.
His spines were flared, his wings partially extended to brush both sides of the wide doorway.
In a level voice that still managed to convey boiling rage, he said, “What is this?”
Uh oh, Moon thought, still breathing hard from the aborted fight.
Moving slowly and carefully, Tempest straightened up and dropped her spines. “It was a misunderstanding.” The consort regarded her for what felt like far too many heartbeats. It seemed evident that he considered that explanation inadequate. Moon wasn’t sure how bad it was for a visiting queen to be caught fighting a consort, especially a consort who didn’t belong to her. From everyone’s reaction, he was guessing it was fairly serious. Tempest added, belatedly, “I thank you for your intervention.”
The consort didn’t react, not with so much as a flick of a spine. After a very long, silent moment, he cocked his head toward Moon. “Get down from there.”
Moon thought about it, but decided he didn’t have much of a choice. After this, Tempest was unlikely to let him provoke her enough to kill him. He dropped to the floor.
He landed two paces away from the consort, who stared down at him. The room was so silent it didn’t sound as if anyone was breathing. Moon realized what the consort was waiting for, and thought, Why not? He had no reason to protect himself and being knocked unconscious would be a relief. He shifted to groundling.
The blood pounding in his temples was suddenly louder, and the room swayed. Moon took a deep breath and stayed on his feet. The cheekbone where Tempest’s first blow had landed was numb and he could feel the skin around his eye swelling. Tempest made a sound, a faint intake of breath; possibly she hadn’t realized how hard she had hit him.
The consort twitched a spine, the only hint of agitation he had shown so far. His gaze moved over Moon from head to toe. Betraying nothing, he said, “Get your things.”
Well, you got your wish, Moon thought sourly, and looked around for his pack. He was getting thrown out. Leaning over to pick up the fallen pack made him feel less faint but more nauseous. He stumbled a little as he straightened up.
The consort still stared at him. “That’s all you brought?” He turned to Tempest.
Moon didn’t understand what he meant, but she did. She said, stiffly, “He was given the opportunity to bring his belongings. We didn’t—”
“This is all I had to bring,” Moon interrupted. “I came there with nothing. Everything I had were gifts because I was the consort. I’m not their consort anymore.” Sanity was returning like a wash of freezing water. It occurred to him that he had been doing that thing again, pretending not to feel, or pretending the feelings were about something else. Except that he seemed to have lost the knack for it, and instead of remaining safely buried it had all exploded out. He didn’t want to be dead, and he hadn’t wanted Tempest to kill him. But in that moment he had been willing to do anything to stop feeling, to change what was happening, fleeing the colony and becoming a solitary, fighting to the death with a queen, anything. He added, “It wasn’t Tempest’s fault. I made her fight me.”
“No, I—” Tempest began, then stopped, her spines flicking in agitation. Moon realized he had given her an out, that if he took responsibility for the fight, then Opal Night couldn’t blame Emerald Twilight.
The consort hissed, grabbed Moon’s wrist and pulled him out of the room. Out in the passage, several Arbora and warriors waited, listening intently, frozen in consternation. As the consort appeared, they hurriedly cleared a path, some of them climbing right up the walls. The only one Moon recognized was Russet. As they passed her, the consort snapped, “Send for Lithe.”
The consort took the first turn up a ramp that wound deeper into the tree. Moon had assumed he was being thrown out of the court, but this wasn’t the way to the colony’s main entrance. He planted his feet and wrenched his wrist out of the consort’s grip, scales rasping against his groundling skin. The consort turned back, spines lifting. Moon said, “Where are we going?”
The consort lashed his tail impatiently. “To the consorts’ bowers.” He tilted his head. “Did you want to stay with them?”
“No.”
“Then come on.”
The consort took more turns, finally passing through a doorway onto a bridge that crossed one small curve of the central well. It was almost under the spray of the waterfall, and a cool damp updraft ruffled Moon’s hair. The bridge went under a heavy arbor of vines and through the inner wall of the tree, back into a passage heavily carved with figures of Aeriat and Arbora.
The passage ended in a big round room, all carved wood, with a beaten metal hearth bowl in the center. There were low benches here too, curved ones, covered with gray furs and cushions in dark fabrics. The consort pushed Moon down on the nearest. “Sit there.”
Moon sat. His head was starting to clear; the brisk walk and the cool mist from the waterfall had helped.
The consort paced away, spines flicking and his tail lashing impatiently, then he shifted to groundling. He was bigger than Moon in this form too, with a heavier build than Aeriat usually had. His skin was a lighter gold-bronze, and he had red-brown hair. His face was more square and blunt than Moon’s, or any other consort he had seen before. He was still handsome, but he looked like he was built for fighting rather than breeding. He was dressed in dark brown and leather, a shirt that left his arms bare to show off chased gold armbands. His expression was serious, not angry. Moon asked, “So you aren’t throwing me out of the colony?”
“What?” The consort glanced at him as if that was the craziest thing he had heard yet. “Of course not.”
A young Arbora in groundling form rushed in, stumbled to a halt as she saw them. She had dark copper skin and dark hair cut into a fluffy halo around her face, and a slim strong build under the faded blue shirt and pants she wore. She had a satchel slung over one shoulder and from the dirt smudges, looked like she had been called in from gardening.
Brow furrowed with concern, she looked from Moon to the consort. “Yes?”
“Take care of him,” the consort said, and walked out.
Moon stared after him. He called out, “If I ask nicely, can I be thrown out of the colony?”
The Arbora stepped closer, peering at Moon. “Russet said the foreign queen hit you in the face, but I didn’t believe her. I see I was wrong.”
The side of Moon’s face was still numb but he could feel the skin tightening with incipient swelling. “Who are you? Who was he?”
“Oh, I’m Lithe, a mentor. He was Umber, the consort of Onyx, the sister queen.” Lithe slipped the satchel off her shoulder and knelt. She sorted through it and dumped out some cloth packets of herbs. Her sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscular forearms and an array of bracelets, beads, and bright metal and polished stones. Ducking her head so her hair shielded her face, she added, “Ah…it was also suggested that I ask you if you had been…mistreated?”
“Not lately.” Looking past her, Moon saw they had an audience. Other Arbora gathered in the doorway from the passage, and more in a smaller doorway across the room. They were all dressed for outdoor work and carried a strong scent of loam. Realizing Moon was watching them, they retreated with some confusion, but from the rustling and whispers coming from the passage, they hadn’t gone far.
Lithe looked up at him and smiled uncertainly, clearly not sure how to take his answer. “That’s…good.” She got up to reach for a kettle. “How long were you with Indigo Cloud? Emerald Twilight told us a story about you being alone—”
“I was alone, until six months ago when Indigo Cloud’s line-grandfather found me,” Moon said. He had a question of his own. “Why did Opal Night abandon me, a female warrior, and four baby Arbora to die in the forests of the Abascene peninsula?”
“What?” Lithe almost dropped the kettle. There was a chorus of shocked gasps from the passage.
After a long moment, Lithe said, “What happened to the others?”
“They were eaten by Tath,” Moon said, not bothering to s
often it, not saying “they died” or “they were killed” or any of the other words that were easier to hear but less true.
Silence stretched. Lithe set the kettle on the warming stones and looked down at it, biting her lip. “I don’t know what happened. I was born after the attack.” She cleared her throat. “Who were they? The Arbora, the warrior?”
“Leaf, Light, Bliss, and Fern. The warrior was called Sorrow.”
The Arbora just outside the room whispered to each other. Nobody seemed to have an answer. This was about what Moon had expected. And he didn’t see much point in staying here any longer. He pushed to his feet. “I’m leaving.” He could at least retrace the route between here and Indigo Cloud, looking for signs of Jade and the others.
Lithe glanced up, startled. “You can’t leave! The daughter queen wants to see you. She’s your clutchmate.”
“Clutchmate?” Moon repeated. For a moment the word didn’t make sense. “They said…Rise said I was the only survivor of the queen’s last clutch.”
“The only consort,” Lithe explained. “It was a mixed royal clutch, three consorts and two queens. One of the queens survived.” She hesitated. “Her name is Celadon. Your birthqueen is called Malachite.”
Moon shook his head, telling himself it didn’t change anything.
Lithe took that for confusion, and explained, “Malachite is the reigning queen. Onyx is the sister queen, but she’s descended from the bloodline that remained here when the court split up and half of it went to the east, generations ago.” Lithe handed Moon a cloth pad filled with herbs. Automatically he pressed it against his eye and felt the swelling start to ease immediately. Mentors augmented their healing simples with magic; the more powerful the mentor, the quicker the healing. Lithe must be very strong. “When the eastern branch of the court returned, forty turns or so ago, Malachite led them back here.” Lithe hesitated. “The consort who fathered you was killed by the Fell. They attacked the eastern colony and destroyed it.”
Moon took a deep breath, the scent of the sweet herbs tingling in his throat. “I knew it was the Fell.”