The Serpent Sea

by Martha Wells

  Still lost in memory, Stone added, “No one ever thought I’d get a queen, but Azure picked me out of the lot.”

  Moon frowned at him. “Why didn’t they think you’d get a queen?”

  Stone tapped his cheek, below his clouded right eye. He said, dryly, “I wasn’t born perfect.”

  Moon had always thought that was a fighting injury, like the rest of Stone’s scars. He knew consorts often went to other courts; Stone had been trying to get one from Star Aster when he had found Moon. But he supposed another court wouldn’t want an imperfect consort either. “What do consorts do, when they can’t get a queen?”

  Stone thought about it for a long moment. “It depends on the court. Here… it wouldn’t have been so bad. All the benefits of being a consort, and none of the responsibilities.”

  Moon was still working out what he felt about the benefits and responsibilities of being a consort. Before Jade, he would have been more than happy with the less complicated life of a warrior; all he had ever wanted was a place to live. Finding a place to live without having to hide what he was had been a completely unexpected turn of luck. But he could imagine how someone raised with the idea that the point of his life was to be a queen’s mate and to make clutches would see things differently. “That could seem… pointless.”

  Stone didn’t look away from the ruined gardens. “It depends what you make of it.”

  Thunder crashed, near enough to send a tremble through the wood underfoot, and Moon flinched back from the flash.

  Stone glanced at him, lifting a brow. Moon was prepared for some sort of remark, but all Stone did was drop a hand on the back of Moon’s neck and shake him—affectionately, not hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Let’s go.”

  Stone shoved the door into place, slid the bolts home, and they made their way down again. They took the long stairways through the silent spaces, since Stone didn’t seem to want to shift. The light-shells had been sporadically lit, giving glimpses of balcony-bowers hanging out over circular wells, dry fountains and pools, and carvings of Aeriat, Arbora, strange plants and animals mixed in with the more familiar. Much of it was inlaid with polished shell or glittering stones, or clear crystal. The singing had died away. Most of the court must have settled into sleep.

  When they reached the greeting hall they found Knell sitting at the hearth with the other soldiers. He nodded to Stone. “The hunters are at the stair just below the teachers’ bowers, with Pearl and some warriors. Jade’s just below us, outside the nurseries.”

  Stone looked around the hall thoughtfully. “I’ll come back up later and sleep here.”

  Moon saw the flicker of relief cross Knell’s face. This was the only entrance they had found so far that wasn’t sealed, and if anything was going to object to their presence, it would probably choose to enter that way. Stone would be a big deterrent.

  They took the stairs down to the teachers’ hall. Vine, Floret, and Sand had joined the others there, all in groundling form, and settled into a pile of bedding on the other side of the chamber. Root, demonstrating a youthful lack of nerves, was already curled up asleep.

  Sand had always been in Jade’s camp, but Moon had thought Vine and Floret were closer to Pearl. Either they had changed their allegiance or they were just here to help guard this side of the nurseries and the Arbora’s bowers. It made him a little edgy not to know.

  Moon sat down on one side of the hearth. Stone took the other and settled into place with a groan. Flower dipped cups of tea out of the steaming pot for them, asking Stone, “Are you all right?”

  He gave her a sour look. “I’m old.”

  Flower smiled. “We’d noticed.”

  Jade came in from the passage, and Chime asked her, “Are we settled for now?”

  “Finally.” Jade shook out her head frills and shifted to Arbora. “Everyone is convinced that we need daylight to finish exploring, and we need rest before we make plans and argue about where to put everything.”

  Song said, “Your consort got your bed ready.”

  Lifting his cup, Moon froze, self-conscious. He had made the sleeping place without even thinking about it. When he and Jade had flown to the east together, they had quickly got into the habit of taking turns, one finding and preparing a place to sleep and the other hunting for food. Aboard the flying ship, he had been recovering from his injuries and staying in a cabin with the mentors and Chime, who had been taking care of him. He realized he had no idea how to live with Jade inside a colony, and he kept running into subtleties of Raksuran behavior that he had no idea how to react to. He knew the others were staring at him, and made himself take a sip of tea as if nothing was wrong.

  Jade tilted her head to study Song thoughtfully. Song’s eyes widened and she said, “I was just teasing!”

  “Hmm,” Jade commented. She went over to the baskets and opened one to dig through it.

  Chime gave Song an exasperated look, then turned to the others, obviously changing the subject. “How much food do we have left?”

  “Enough for several days, plus the fresh meat from the hunt this morning,” Rill answered. “We still have about half the dried meat, because the Aeriat were refusing to eat it. We’re getting low on dried fruit, sava flour, dried sava, and roots.”

  Stone said, “There are a lot of plants in this area that we can eat. Since no one’s been eating them for who knows how many turns, there should be plenty around.”

  Jade sat down next to Moon, then leaned over to put something on the floor in front of him. It gleamed red-gold against the wood, catching the light: it was the bracelet that Stone had taken to Star Aster, the token to be given to the new consort. Moon picked it up. Having seen more of the Arbora’s artwork, he could tell now that the fluid serpentine shapes etched into the band were two entwined Raksura. He looked up to see Jade watching him, the scales on her brow faintly creased with worry.

  Moon put the bracelet on, just under the knobby bone in his wrist. Jade pulled his head down and her teeth grazed the skin behind his ear in a gentle nip.

  Flower cleared her throat and smiled faintly. “At least there should be plenty of game around here, too.”

  Stone set his cup down. “We’ll need to reestablish our territory. I should be able to find the old boundaries.”

  Jade glanced up. “Our territory? I wouldn’t think we’d need to worry…” She eyed Stone more sharply. “Unless there’s another court in this area?”

  “There are several. This is the home forest, where our bloodlines were first born. There used to be colonies everywhere through here. Too many.” Stone shrugged. “Now there’s plenty of room.”

  Chapter Three

  Moon woke buried in blankets, with Jade warm beside him. His inner sense of the sun told him it was still some time before dawn, and the storm had calmed to the point where the wind

  was barely audible. He pulled a fold of fabric down, just enough to get a good taste of the air.

  Nothing had changed since last night. The others in the hall breathed deeply in sleep, except for some of the warriors on the far side of the room. From the soft noises, they were enjoying each other’s company under the blankets. Good idea, he thought, and flipped the blanket back up to settle down again and nuzzle Jade’s neck.

  She slid an arm across his waist, curling around him. Nipping his ear, she whispered, “When we know we’re settled here for good, we’ll start a clutch.”

  He nodded against her cheek. He was looking forward to babies in the nurseries that had actually come from him and Jade. But first they had to make certain this place was as secure as it seemed, and that the court could find enough food in the surrounding forest. More things to consider when you were choosing a permanent place to live. He said, “We need to make a consort for Frost.” Since Jade had taken Moon as consort, Frost had been demanding that they get a consort for her, occasionally remembering to request queens for Thorn and Bitter.

  Jade hissed, ruefully amused. “I never realized what fledgling
queens were like. I’m starting to feel a little sympathy for Pearl and Amber, when I was that age.”

  Moon didn’t have any trouble imagining Jade as an imperious little fledgling, making Pearl’s life difficult, but he wasn’t going to say so. There was something else he was reluctant to bring up, but he had to know about the awkward moment last night. “What did it mean when I made a bed for you?”

  This time Jade sounded more annoyed than amused. “It’s an old custom. It means you want to sleep with me. Song was being a little idiot.”

  “I do want to sleep with you,” he pointed out, emphasizing it by nuzzling her collarbone.

  “Consorts have their own bowers.” Jade’s tone was teasing. She pulled him more firmly against her. “So they can be guarded and chaperoned.”

  This was the first time Moon had heard about the guarding and chaperoning part. Though it made sense, with everyone being careful to inform him that consorts his age—normal consorts his age—were supposed to be shy delicate creatures who seldom ventured out of their colonies. “So you’re telling me that Stone and I are going to sleep up there above the queens’ level? Because it’s about thirty turns too late to chaperone me.”

  She tugged at the tie of his pants, her claws carefully sheathed. “When Thorn and Bitter get past the fledgling stage, they’ll come out of the nurseries and they’ll need bowers. As well as any other consorts we happen to produce.”

  “I don’t know how that’s going to happen, if I’m sleeping up there with Stone—”

  Jade growled, and rolled on top of him, and that was the end of that conversation.

  

  Moon drowsed for a while, and woke when Jade climbed over him to get out of their nest. He shook himself free of the blankets, stretching extravagantly.

  Chime and Rill sat by the hearth basin, blearily waiting for the water kettle to boil. Flower was nowhere to be seen. Jade, who was waking the warriors by the simple method of kicking various piles of blankets, told Moon, “I’m going to take a look around, make sure everything’s all right.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Moon climbed out of the blankets and pulled his clothes back on. They left while the others were still stumbling around.

  Moon and Jade made a circuit of the perimeter of their new home, going first up to the greeting hall, where Knell and the soldiers said all was well. Looking around, it took Moon a moment to find Stone. He was still asleep, but in his winged form, curled around the pillars of the stairs, his black scales blending into the carving. “How does he do that?” Moon asked Jade, as they went back down to the teachers’ hall. “Sleep in his other form.” Moon could do it for short periods of time, but it didn’t give him much real rest. He hadn’t seen any of the others do it either.

  Jade shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just one of the things that come with age.”

  They walked the outer passages and found many of the Arbora already up and moving, scrubbing dirt and moss out of the bowers or the dry pools, or sorting through baskets and bags of belongings. As they passed a doorway into an unused room, Moon felt a gritty crunch underfoot and looked down. The floor was covered with broken pottery shards. He stopped to scrape the remnants off; fortunately none was sharp enough to penetrate the thick extra layers of skin on his groundling feet. Jade glanced back and said, “I hope they didn’t break anything important.”

  Moon leaned into the room. More broken pottery was strewn across the floor, pieces with the same blue glaze as the tall jars stacked near the doorway. Several wooden bins, covered with delicately incised images of flowering grasses, stood against the far wall, and the lids had all been smashed. But dust had collected on the splintered debris. He stepped into the room to look into the bins, but they were all empty, except for mold. “This wasn’t one of us. It’s old.”

  “I suppose they were broken when the old court left.” Jade dismissed it, turning away.

  They moved on and took the next stairs down to the level below. At the bottom, they met Pearl, trailed by River, Drift, Coil, and a few other Aeriat, all in groundling form. Pearl flicked her spines at Jade and said, “Where’s Stone? We have decisions to make.”

  Jade flicked her spines back. “He’s in the greeting hall, still asleep.”

  The other warriors avoided Moon’s gaze, but River gave him a look of pure contempt. Pretending to ignore him, Moon folded his arms, so the sleeve of his shirt tugged up, revealing the gold bracelet. River looked away, seething.

  Pearl said, “Then come with me.” And as if she couldn’t bear to leave the encounter on a mostly neutral note, jerked her head toward Moon and added, “Leave that.” She started up the stairs and her obedient warriors trailed behind.

  Jade hissed at her retreating back, then turned to Moon. “Go on,” he told her, before she could speak. During the Fell attack, Pearl had had no choice about including Jade in governing the court, or what had been left of the court. If she was continuing that now, without Stone or Flower or anyone else to cajole her, it had to be a good thing.

  Jade hesitated, lashing her tail. “I suppose I’d better.” She caught his shirt, pulled him close, and rubbed her cheek against his. “I’ll tell you what we talk about.”

  Jade stepped back, jumped up to catch the wall of the stairwell, and Moon went to look for something to do. Pearl’s attitude didn’t bite as much as it might have. A real consort would probably have been bitterly offended at the slight.

  Of course, it probably wasn’t good that he didn’t think of himself as a real consort.

  He followed the sounds of activity to the passage outside and the platform where the flying boats were anchored. The door stood open, and he shifted to make the jump from it down to the wet grass. The sunlight falling through the canopy was bright and tinged with green, and the air was fresh from the rain, heavy with the intriguing scents of the damp forest. A few Arbora were unloading the last supplies from the Indala’s hold, while others tramped around in the mud of the platform, digging and looking for roots among the trailing vines. Niran, Blossom, and Chime stood on the Valendera’s deck, talking and looking up at the mast. Both boats seemed to have come through the storm with no serious damage, which must have been a relief to Niran.

  Moon saw Flower standing knee-deep in the muddy grass, the only Arbora out here in groundling form, and went over to her. “They’re having a meeting in the greeting hall.”

  She nodded absently. “I know. I’ve already had my say with Pearl. I think we should all live in the teachers’ levels for now. It’ll do everyone good to be all jumbled together.”

  At the old colony, the Aeriat had lived slightly apart from the Arbora, and the hunters and soldiers had had separate bowers from the teachers and the small group of mentors. And the tree’s living quarters seemed to be designed for that same system. Moon flexed his claws and prodded thoughtfully at a root buried in the grass. “That’s not normal, is it?”

  “No, but in thriving courts, living by caste doesn’t seem to create problems.” Leaning down to pull up the root, Flower added, “At the old colony, it just caused more trouble. We’d all been moving apart, separating into factions, losing our sense of each other.”

  Moon had seen some of that, when one of the hunters had told him he should be sleeping in the upper levels with the Aeriat instead of down in the teachers’ bowers. Since by that point Moon had been ordered out of the court by both Arbora and Aeriat, he hadn’t seen much difference between them. And he had liked Petal, who had been the leader of the teachers before Bell. She had been one of the small group who had made Moon feel welcome in the court. As Flower paused and crouched to examine the leaves of a vine, Moon said, “Everybody was jumbled together on the boats.”

  “Being jumbled together in comfort may be more productive.” Flower looked up at him, but from her expression her thoughts were on something else. “We’ll have to see what happens. It’s been turns and turns since this court was out from under Fell influence.”

  The same co
uld be said for Moon, though he hadn’t realized it until lately. It still wasn’t something he wanted to think about too closely.

  Chime glided down from the Valendera’s deck and landed beside them. He said, “Everything came through the storm fine. I don’t think we’ll have to do much work before we send the boats back.”

  The plan was to loan Niran a crew of Arbora and Aeriat to help him sail the ships back to the Golden Isles, then the Aeriat could fly the Arbora back to the colony. It would be a long flight, but it was the only way to get the ships back. “Who’s going with him?” Moon asked.

  “We haven’t gotten to that part yet.” Chime scratched his head frills. “Blossom knows the most about how to steer the boats, and Bead knows the second most, but they’ll need more Aeriat.” He looked down, the tip of his tail twitching uneasily. “I’m thinking of going myself.”

  “You are?” Taken aback, Moon stared at him. “Why?” Chime had never spent a night away from the old colony before the trip to the Golden Isles, and he hadn’t given the impression that he particularly liked to travel.

  Chime shrugged. “I thought I’d do something useful.”

  Flower eyed him thoughtfully, and he seemed determined to avoid her gaze. Moon reminded himself Chime wouldn’t be leaving permanently.

  Strike, one of the younger hunters, bounded out of the doorway and landed in the mud with a loud squelch. He hurried over, saying, “Flower, Knell has some things he wants to show you, down in the lower levels.”

  Moon and Chime hadn’t seen anything below this level, so they followed Flower back inside and down the stairwell. Strike led the way off the stairs into a wide high-ceilinged foyer, but Chime stopped to stare at the carving along the curving wall. “What happened here?”

  Moon paused to look, as Flower and Strike continued down the passage. The carving covered most of the wall, a detailed depiction of a seascape, with tall rocky islands rising above ocean waves. But it was covered with holes, as if someone had struck at it with a knife or a chisel. Moon touched one of the gouges and felt rough tool marks and splinters. “Somebody pried out whatever was in here.” There must have been inlaid stones, like the carvings in the Aeriat levels.