Bramble woke with Merit’s hand on her forehead. He whispered, “It’s all right.”

She took in a lungful of scent, nearly all unfamiliar. The only source of light was a hole in the roof. From the sense of movement and height they were no longer on the groundling sunsailer; this was a flying boat. “It is not all right,” she growled. She winced and the motion sent spikes of pain through her head; even the small amount of light was too much. She could tell it was just her and Merit in a small enclosed chamber. “Where are the others? Where’s Jade?”

Merit’s voice went raw with fear. “I don’t know.” He cleared his throat, an effort at control, then more evenly said, “I think it’s just us.”

Bramble opened her eyes, for a heartbeat frozen in terror. Leaving the court and traveling far across the Three Worlds was one thing when you were accompanied by a queen, her consort, your line-grandfather, and a clutchful of warriors. It was like a court in miniature, and therefore reassuring. But for two lone Arbora, it was a horrifying nightmare. She forced her pounding heart to calm, and managed to ask in an almost normal voice, “What happened?”

Merit wet his lips, looking up toward the opening. “We’ve been stolen.”

Arbora don’t get stolen, Bramble wanted to say, that doesn’t happen. Courts always had enough of their own Arbora to deal with, there was no reason to covet anyone else’s. And Arbora wouldn’t permit that kind of bad behavior anyway. Then she belatedly remembered who did steal Arbora, and her throat went tight. “Fell?”

“No, no,” Merit said quickly and Bramble breathed again. “There’s no Fell stench.” He shuddered and Bramble reached up and squeezed his wrist. Merit had been captured by Fell once, not so many turns ago during the attack on the old colony. “It was the Hians who came for Vendoin. That’s who brought the water. They used Fell poison on us.”

“The Hians?” That just didn’t make any sense. Bramble squinted at Merit and realized what she had thought were shadows from the dim light were actually the faint outline of his scales, showing on the brown of his groundling skin. It was the outward sign of the poison, deadly to Fell and not much better to Raksura. She lifted her arm and squinted at her own scale pattern, the darker lines on the brown so strange to see. She tried to shift, reaching for her other form; her stomach did a painful loop, but nothing else happened. “Why is it Hians? What do they want?”

Merit’s voice was bleak. “I don’t know.”

With Merit’s help, Bramble pushed herself into a sitting position. They clung to each other, both weak and shaky, the poison doing something intermittently painful to Bramble’s insides. She knew the stories that said groundlings would drink the poison and then let Fell eat them so it would kill the Fell. She had never understood it; now after personal experience with how sick it made you, she was starting to see how the idea of being eaten by a Fell might seem like a sweet relief.

“The poison was in the food they gave us on the sunsailer,” Bramble said. That part seemed obvious. Fell poison was odorless and the taste was mild, easily disguised by spices. “That means the others are poisoned too.”

“What about the Kish-Jandera?” Merit said. “They wouldn’t just let the Hians steal us.”

“No. No, they wouldn’t. They were afraid at first, but they liked us. They wouldn’t . . .” Bramble couldn’t talk anymore. The others, the Jandera, everyone else on the sunsailer might be dead. That was the only way she could see that this made sense.

The small chamber had only the one opening in the ceiling, covered by a grill of some material that was close to bone in texture, but not at all brittle. Merit had already tried to break it and demonstrated his lack of success for Bramble. Hanging from it and swinging wildly didn’t even make it creak. When Bramble could stand without her stomach trying to jump out of her body, they both tried their strength against it, but it wouldn’t budge.

The walls were of the dense moss, like Callumkal’s flying boat, though Bramble had explored every pace of it during their long trip to the sel-Selatra and found no chambers like this one. There was no light except for the dim illumination falling through the roof opening, and Merit wasn’t able to make anything glow. The poison must affect his mentor abilities as well as their shifting. It was not a reassuring thought.

At least there was a ceramic jar of water and another empty container for their latrine. After what felt like forever, a Hian came to drop a basket of fruit through the grill, while several more Hians stood around with Kishan fire weapons. Merit tried to speak to them in Altanic, but the Hians wouldn’t answer. Bramble whispered in Raksuran, “Remember, they don’t know we speak Kedaic.”

“You think that still matters?” Merit asked, staring warily up at the Hians.

“It’s the only advantage we have,” Bramble reminded him.

The fruit was dried, some kind of ground fruit they didn’t recognize, but they forced themselves to eat it. They were Arbora Raksura, not Aeriat, but they still needed meat to live. Bramble thought that would probably be the least of their problems. She asked Merit, “How long does the Fell poison last?”

“It depends on how much they gave us.” He hunched his shoulders uneasily. “They can always put more in the water and keep us like this indefinitely.”

Bramble hissed. They might die of that first, before they figured out why the Hians wanted them.

The wind rose high enough to make the boat tremble, then died away again. Bramble realized she hadn’t been able to scent the sea since waking. The air wasn’t fresh, and she and Merit now smelled badly enough that it was obscuring more subtle odors, but she thought she could detect hints of greenery. Which meant they were traveling over land and had been for some time.

“It’s been days.” She turned to Merit, shocked by the realization. “Since they took us. Days.” And no one had come flying after them. Her heart wanted to sink and she refused to let it. The others can’t be dead. They can’t be.

Merit admitted reluctantly, “Yes. Several days, maybe more. I remember being given water. I’m sure someone picked me up and carried me, at some point. I don’t think we were put in this cage until they decided to let us wake up.”

She frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me?” As her nausea faded her brain was starting to work again, and she knew she needed as much information as possible.

He shook his head. “What’s the point? It’s my fault we’re here. I should have seen this.” His voice trembled and he buried his face in his hands. “My scrying was useless. If the others are dead it’s my fault.”

Bramble had to nip that bud right now. She made her voice hard, and as queen-like as it was possible for a short round Arbora hunter to sound. “Merit, we don’t have the luxury for things to be anybody’s fault. We have to be ready to act.”

Merit lifted his head and glared at her, which was the result Bramble had been going for.

Then a door must have opened somewhere because Bramble suddenly caught a confusing blend of new scents. Voices and steps sounded near, getting closer. She leapt to her feet, her shoulder slamming into Merit’s as he did the same. They stood under the grill, near the dim shaft of light from above. “It’s Delin!” he whispered harshly.

Bramble caught Delin’s scent and drew it in. There was something sour in his sweat, not unlike the Fell poison. But if he was here, the others must be too. They’re coming to rescue us, she thought, her heart pounding. She couldn’t catch any hint of Raksura but it might just be lost in her and Merit’s too-strong unwashed musk.

Bramble heard the steps of at least four groundlings. They stopped nearby and Delin said anxiously, “Bramble, Merit, you are there?” He spoke Raksuran, and his voice was hoarse and strained.

“We’re here,” Merit called back. Bramble stepped to the side, angling to see. Delin stood at the edge of the opening. He was small and slim like all Golden Islanders, his gold skin weathered and worn like an old tree. All Islanders had straight white hair, but now Delin’s was ragged and unkempt, and his long beard was in disarray. It was hard to make out details in the bad light, but she thought his cheeks and the soft flesh under his eyes were sunken, a sign of illness. She wanted to growl aloud in disappointment. This wasn’t a rescue; he was a prisoner too.

“Speak Kedaic,” an unfamiliar voice ordered.

“They don’t understand it,” Delin protested, in Kedaic.

Merit squeezed Bramble’s wrist, and she bit back a quiet hiss of triumph. When Jade had told them at the beginning of the trip that they would pretend not to understand the western trade language of Kedaic, Bramble had thought it was a lot of trouble for not much return, especially once the expedition groundlings had seemed so trustworthy. Moon had thought it necessary, but then Moon was the most suspicious person Bramble had ever met.

Now it was proving more than handy. And it didn’t escape her that Delin had just reminded them of it. Whatever was happening, Delin was still on their side.

The unfamiliar voice said, “I don’t know that I believe you. Vendoin said not to trust you.”

Bramble looked at Merit to share the outrage, and Merit rolled his eyes.

Delin was clearly thinking along the same path. He said, dryly, “Since Vendoin betrayed and poisoned me and my friends, and stole myself and Callumkal away to hold us prisoner, you will understand why I am uninterested in her opinions.”

So just Callumkal and Delin, no one else, Bramble thought. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or newly terrified. If Jade and the others weren’t here, where were they? What had happened to the sunsailer and Rorra and the rest of the Kishan crew?

There was a slight hesitation, and the voice said, “Do they understand Altanic? Speak to them in that.”

Delin switched to that trade language to say, “Are you well?”

“We’re all right,” Merit said, in careful Altanic. “They gave us Fell poison and we still can’t shift. Are the others here?” Bramble nodded approval of the question, knowing it would add veracity to the Raksura-can’t-speak-Kedaic fiction.

Delin answered, “No. Vendoin says they were left on the sunsailer. Perhaps I believe her.”

Bramble almost bit through her lip in anxiety.

“Are you all right?” Merit asked. “You smell like you don’t feel well.”

Bramble heard the Hians react to the question, as if they found it unsettling. Delin said, “Vendoin added a mixture to the supplies sent down to the sunsailer, a combination of Fell poison and some other simple that made us all unconscious. It has made me quite ill, but I recover.”

Bramble drew breath to speak, but Delin added, “I know your sister Bramble is very afraid, but you must reassure her, so she does not panic and make herself ill too, you understand.”

Bramble let the breath out, startled. Ah, I think I see. She nudged a nonplussed Merit, who said doubtfully, “I’ll try.” She nudged him again and he added, “She’s very upset. What do they want with us?”

Speaking Kedaic, the other voice interrupted, “That’s enough.”

In the same language, rapidly, Delin said, “But surely I should be allowed to tell them that we go south to another place of the foundation builders, and I have no notion yet why Vendoin has betrayed us—”

“No, that’s enough.”

Bramble barely heard the rustling, the protests as Delin was pulled away. “Why?” Merit whispered. “Why is this happening? What do they want?”

Bramble swallowed down bile and tried to remember everything Vendoin and Callumkal and the others had said about the foundation builders. “The Hians knew things about the city the Kishan didn’t.” The Hians could see in colors that eluded both the Kish-Jandera and the Raksura. Vendoin had said she was translating all the writing on the walls, but they had only had her word for it, and now they knew her word was nothing. “Maybe there was a map to this other foundation builder place. Vendoin wanted it for the Hians, and not the Kish-Jandera, and she stole Callumkal and Delin, and us, to help her get inside it.” That presupposed a lot of things, the main one being that the new city would be sealed like the sea-mount city. It also presupposed that Vendoin valued Merit and Bramble’s contribution to opening that city, which was not an impression that Bramble had had before.

Merit said, “We don’t know that the others are all right. Delin didn’t see what happened either.”

Bramble turned away. Her mind was racing and she needed to settle herself and get down to some serious thinking. “We have to get away and find them.”

Merit hissed in frustration. “How? We can’t even shift! I can’t even make light!”

“I don’t know, not yet.” Except Bramble knew she wasn’t Merit’s sister, not the way the Altanic word meant, and that she wasn’t afraid, not the way the Hians would think, not the paralyzing fear of helpless prey. Delin knew that as well as she did; he was preparing the Hians for something, the way Arbora would prepare the ground of a garden for planting. “Delin is trying to give us an opportunity. We just have to wait to see what we can do with it.”

The Port of Gwalish Mar

Sleeping in swamps was always difficult. The brackish mud was too cool against Moon’s scales to be comfortable, and every time he managed to doze off, something crawled over him. The clouds of insects sheltering in the tall grass weren’t much interested in Raksura, but the ugly little things that looked like fish with legs had sharp teeth and were annoyingly persistent. Moon had always found sleeping in his scaled form awkward and not restful, but the distractions made it nearly impossible.

Fortunately for his temper, the sky was finally darkening toward evening. Moon shoved himself up out of the mud and slid through the sharp grass blades and over to a much larger puddle. He found a knot of driftwood near the edge and chunked it in. “Stone, wake up.”

Bubbles broke the muddy surface, then a big dark scaled tail whipped up and took a swing at Moon. He dodged and went to find a less muddy place to clean off in.

He waded through the waist-deep grass out to one of the pools where the sea entered the wetlands. Sitting on his heels in the cool salt-water, he scrubbed the sticky mud off his scales with handfuls of sand. The empty sea stretched out, the evening sky was indigo and purple, and the quarter moon gleamed on the water. The breeze held saltwater and the intense green scent of the wetland grasses, leavened with various flowers and laced with bird scat and dead fish. All the groundling shipping that he had spotted throughout the afternoon, both surface sailing ships and flying boats, had already made port.

Moon glanced around again out of habit, even though nothing could see him except for a few tall spindly shore birds striding away through the shallows. Then he shifted.

His wings, tail, spines, and black scales flowed away into his soft-skinned form. Anyone watching would now see a tall lean groundling, with dark bronze skin and dark hair. He was dressed in light pants cut off at the knee and a loose brown shirt, the kind of clothes some groundlings wore for sailing or other work. It wouldn’t draw attention in most of the groundling ports Moon had visited, but this wasn’t exactly a groundling port. He felt the wind lift his hair and scratched at the back of his neck where he hadn’t managed to get all the mud out of his spines.

With no warning, Stone stepped out of the grass. Moon twitched in spite of himself. Stone was in his groundling form now too, with gray skin and hair, in battered clothes much like Moon’s, and a pack slung across his shoulder. He was somehow already dry and mostly clean, despite having been buried in a mud wallow for most of the afternoon. Clearly not in any better a mood than Moon was, he said, “What’s taking you so long?”

“I’m waiting for you.” Moon hissed at him and followed him back through the grass.

The port that lay just beyond the wetland was far enough from the protected Imperial Kish territories to be wary of Fell. Since Raksuran consorts were almost always mistaken for Fell by uninformed groundlings, approaching it by air in the late afternoon daylight had been impossible. Also, it had been several long days and nights of flight across the archipelago to the mainland coast, and they had needed a few hours rest. If their quarry had come here, they were already too late to catch them; the best they hoped for was some confirmation that they were on the right track.

They slogged through the weeds until they came to a seawall constructed of huge chunks of sandy-colored rock. It was nearly fifty paces tall, and reminded Moon of the ancient roadways in the east and down in the Abascene peninsula. Following Stone, Moon clambered up, the rough texture of the rock still holding the day’s heat and warm against the hard soles of his feet.

At the top Moon saw the lights of the port, though it was already dark enough not to be able to make out much detail. But Rorra had described it well enough for Moon to know what they were looking at.

A long curve of lights marked the dock area where the sea-going ships would tie up, though many lay at anchor in the protected harbor. Just past the docks were tall dome-shapes dotted with light that weren’t made of stone or metal or wood, but were a kind of resin excreted by tame creatures that sounded like a combination of herdbeast grasseaters and skylings. The domes were used as dwellings and warehouses for cargo. Past them were clusters of tall spindly metal structures that looked like giant flowers; those were docks for flying boats. Between them a mutli-storied web of bridges and walkways and suspended structures linked the stalks for the groundling crews and formed an upper city for the skylings.

They made their way along the seawall as it sloped down slightly until it was only twelve or so paces above the muddy ground. When it turned toward the harbor, Moon and Stone climbed down and headed in toward the domes.

Moon tasted the air and winced. Groundling cities held a myriad of different scents, but this place had a bitter undertone of predator musk that confirmed all of Rorra’s warnings. It also made the skin of Moon’s fingertips itch, an urge to flex the claws he didn’t have in this form.

The area around the nearest dome was lit by tall lamps hanging from metal poles. The dangling glass bubbles were filled with the darting, glowing flickers of trapped insects. More light spilled out of a large round door, and figures moved inside.

It was too far from the flying boat docks to be useful to them, so Moon meant to pass it by. But as they crossed the circle of light, a shape came rumbling out toward them.

It was large and thick, with heavy muscles in its arms and legs, and slick light green skin. Its head was a rounded lump set directly on its shoulders, and its nose and wide mouth were equally compressed, as if it was designed not to give an enemy anything to get a grip on. Its hands were big and clawed, and bone spikes stood out all over its body, along its arms, on its shoulders and the top of its head. Moon thought they were inserted, not natural, since there was bruising on the skin around them. It was wearing a harness of fishskin with various sharp metal implements attached to it and a bone armor plate over its genitals. From the webbing on its feet, Moon guessed it was a swampling.

It advanced on them, making a gargling noise Moon realized was a laugh. In gravelly Kedaic, it said, “Soft skins. You know what we do with soft skins here?”

Stone stopped and tilted his head to regard the swampling with his one good eye. The other eye was clouded, and had been from birth; Moon had never been sure how well Stone could see out of it. Stone said, easily, “No. What do you think I’ll do when I find out?”

Moon winced and rubbed his temple, and said in Raksuran, “Don’t.” They had been traveling hard, Stone doing the flying so they could move as fast as possible, feeding on nothing but the fish Moon could catch during the brief rests when they found an uninhabited island or a sandbar. If Stone’s temper snapped, it would just make this harder.

To the swampling, Stone said, “Wait.” He turned to Moon and said in Raksuran, “‘Don’t’ what? You’re the one with the temper.”

Moon folded his arms. “You’re senile and delusional.” Admittedly, Moon wasn’t exactly in a good mood either.

“After him, you’re next.” Stone turned back to the swampling. “Now what do you want?”

The swampling hesitated, rocking on its heels, the blades on its harness jingling. It had clearly expected them to be afraid. That they weren’t implied its estimation of their ability to defend themselves was incorrect, possibly fatally so. But it rallied and said, “There’s nothing but trouble for softskins here.”

Stone said, “Good, that’s exactly how we like it.”

Moon snarled in irritation and asked the swampling, “Is there a resting place for flying boat crews?”

The swampling looked from Moon to Stone. Stone seemed to be taking up far more room than could be accounted for by the size of his groundling body. The swampling stepped back and pointed. “They mostly stay on the hive masts, and the webs.”

That was no help. Moon suppressed a hiss of frustration. They didn’t have time to search the whole upper city.

Stone eyed the swampling a moment more, then stepped past it and walked on into the darkness. As Moon followed, the swampling made a last attempt to dominate the encounter and called after them, “Careful. Somebody might get eaten.”

“Not just now. Maybe later,” Stone called back.

Moon hissed. “That’s not funny.”

Stone glanced at him. Moon couldn’t read his expression in the dark, but he was fairly sure he was getting that annoyed look again.

There were broad pathways of hard-packed dirt between the domes, and no real attempt to light the way. The other structures seemed makeshift at best: shacks and lean-tos made of driftwood and fragments of large insect carapaces, probably from the same creatures who made the resin for the domes. Huddled figures sat outside, watching the foot traffic pass. The scents were intense, bitter and smoky and rotten and sweet, and Moon could identify few of them. Stone didn’t react, but then Stone didn’t react to a lot of things. Though his senses were far more acute than Moon’s, he was able to filter out scents and sounds much more effectively.

They found their way through a cluster of domes, most rowdy with small crowds of various species of swampling and other scaled groundlings. Like the first swampling had said, Moon didn’t see any groundlings with soft skin. No one approached them, and most ignored them, but Moon caught one or two watching them with a possessive intensity. It made his back teeth ache and his prey reflex twitch. He hoped he and Stone could do their business and get out of here without killing anybody. He said in Raksuran, “Maybe we should have done this in daylight.”

“No, it wasn’t worth the risk.” Stone sounded less irritable. “The last thing we need is for some ally of the Hians to figure out that we’re on the right trail.”

Moon hoped they were on the right trail. When they had left the others, Lithe’s visions had still been indicating movement.

They came to the area where the giant stalks of the flying boat docks towered up. Squinting, Moon saw several boats anchored on each of the nearest, tied off to the elaborate flower structures that extended out to partially enclose their hulls. The upper city stretched overhead, the complicated webs of cable and platforms dotted with light. Voices and the sounds of movement drifted down.

They could safely ignore the bladder boats, which were kept aloft by giant inflated air bladders and were much slower and more difficult to steer than the others. There were several kinds of craft Moon didn’t recognize, and some spiky shapes that might be made from the same material as the giant insect carapaces. But on the third flower stalk were three Kishan-made boats, grown from the moss that converted sunlight to the power that allowed them to fly. But none was the right shape and all were much smaller than their quarry.

An armor-plated form staggered toward them in the dimness, then staggered rapidly away as Stone growled low enough to make Moon’s bones vibrate. Moon felt pretty certain that if the Hians had stopped here, they wouldn’t have left the upper city. Even with Kishan fire weapons, this place was too dangerous.

Below the nearest stalk lay one of the structures made from the nearly complete carapace of a giant beetle-like insect. The scents and the smoke drifting out was foul, and a few swamplings had collapsed outside. Some big scaled groundlings stood near the door, watching Stone and Moon.

The predator scent was getting stronger. “We need to move,” Moon said. It was getting harder to control his prey reflex. “Or we could shift and kill everybody in town.” The longer he was here the more attractive the second option became.

“We wouldn’t have to kill everybody.” Stone eyed the group near the carapace. It was hard to tell if he was joking. He turned back to the docking stalk. “Let’s see if there’s any rational people in the upper levels.”

A ramp curved up the first stalk. There were cage-like structures on the sides, which was disturbing, until Moon realized they were climbing bars, basically a staircase without steps, clearly meant for races other than the swamplings or scaled groundlings. More predators watched from below, though no one tried to follow them.

The ramp was gritty underfoot and they followed it up two turns to the first flower structure standing out from the main stalk. Small bulbs of light lit the interior, the glowing insects flickering inside. More climbing racks filled the space, leading up to smaller rooms tucked in among the curving petals. On the floor of the chamber lay bags for supplies and some baskets. As Moon and Stone climbed closer, the miasma of the town faded a little and was alleviated by a strong scent of clean fur and fruit.

The sources of the clean fur scent hung from the climbing bars. They were long limbed, long bodied, with narrow heads and large eyes in shades of yellow and green. Their hands had spidery, nimble fingers, and surprisingly, so did their feet. They must be a treeling race, not intended for the ground. Moon realized the small metal frames with the straps lying among the other supplies might be meant to help them walk on flat surfaces, like the way Rorra’s boots worked.

As they drew level with the chamber, a treeling uncoiled from the frame, head lifting to stare at them in what seemed to be surprise. “What are you doing here?” it said in Kedaic. Its voice was rough and rippling, suggesting a throat with an unusual texture.

Moon had a bad moment, thinking that it had been warned by the Hians and recognized them, before it added, “The Ilmarish hate soft skins. It’s dangerous for you to walk on the ground.”

“We’re not as soft as we look,” Stone said. “It’s not dangerous for you?”

“We’re the only Lisitae who trade with them,” the treeling said. “They can’t afford to chase us away.” Moon wasn’t sure if that was the name of the race, a family, or another city. It continued, “Why are you here? Are you traders? You should go to the upper city. It’s not as dangerous there.”

“We’re looking for someone,” Moon said. “Are there any Kishan flying boats from Hia Iserae in the docks?”

Stone added, “With Hians aboard. They’re about our size, but look like they have rock armor in patches on their skin.”

The treeling blinked, then leaned back and spoke to the others hanging in the upper frames. Moon caught the words “Hia Iserae.”

A smaller one with darker fur peeled itself off the frame and hung upside down to say, “Better check with the portmaster.” The treeling swayed toward them, sniffing thoughtfully. “Why do you want to know?”

Stone said, “They stole something from our flying boat, back in Kish-Jandera.” That had the virtue of being true, though it had happened on the fringe of the ocean deeps. Two more Lisitae swung down to listen, their wide eyes fixed on Moon and Stone. It would have been disturbing, except there was just something non-threatening in their attitude. Or maybe it was the long languorous limbs and the fluffy fur. “Where’s the portmaster?”

“In the upper city, toward the fifth stand over, that way. The one with the ktarki flyer. It has a loop, like this.” One long furred limb made a gesture. “The portmaster’s structure is large and round, with a light at the peak of the roof.”

“Thank you,” Stone told them.

“Go up!” one called as they turned back to the ramp. “Stay away from the ground!”

They followed the ramp up. On the ground below, a group of predators stared at them, intently following their progress. Moon was too occupied by his trail of thought to snarl at them. “So did the Hians plan to stop here all along? And if not, why stop?”

Large Kishan flying boats could carry a lot of food and water. This was why Jade and Malachite meant to search other potential directions and sightings of Hian flying boats; there just wasn’t a good reason for the Hians to come to this port, and even Lithe had been afraid her vision was wrong.

Stone rumbled under his breath, but it was thoughtful rumbling, not irritated rumbling. “Either something went wrong with their boat, or someone was waiting for them here,” he said.

They reached the point on the stalk where a bridge led off the ramp and into the walkways of the upper city. The maze of structures extended up several levels overhead. Some were just awnings stretched over platforms, others had driftwood walls and thatched roofs, and many were secreted bulbs, like the domes down on the ground.

The further they walked, the more activity there was, and the more variety among the races. Moon saw more treelings, some furred and some with shiny scaled hides. There were tall, willowy groundlings with long limbs and narrow skulls that curved back. They wore draperies that concealed much of their bodies, and there was something about their delicate appearance that was deceptive. Other soft-skinned groundlings were blue like the Serican traders in the east, or a dark brown, similar to the Kish-Jandera. Music, mostly drums and other staccato instruments, vibrated through the metal and plank walkway.

There was too much activity for Moon and Stone to draw attention. Some groundlings glanced up to watch them pass, but most were too occupied with speaking to each other or with moving goods along the walkways. Some platforms acted as gathering places, and some seemed to be caravanserai and depots for supplies. From the scents of cooked meat and spiced oils, some were selling food.

Stone veered off toward one and Moon stopped to wait without protest. Cooked groundling food wasn’t that filling, but it might stop Stone from ripping apart the next predator-swampling that looked at them funny.

Standing out of the way beside a heavy support cable, Moon caught movement overhead and nearly shifted. It was only a big skyling, climbing along a web of rope above. It was hard to get a good look at it in the intermittent light, but the body was rounded, with reflective shells and multiple hands that gripped the supporting bars of the web. Some smaller skylings that looked a little like the eastern Dwei buzzed along after it.

Stone returned, slipping past a noisy party of furred groundlings. He shoved a packet of greased paper at Moon. “Hold this.”

It was full of fried dumplings. Moon scented sugar dough and his stomach growled. Stone took another packet out from under his arm and poked at it tentatively. “What’s that one?” Moon asked, hoping it was meat.

“I don’t know, I asked for some of everything they had.” Stone tasted it and shrugged. “It’s bug paste.” As he tucked it away in his pack, he tilted his head toward the far side of the walkway. “Did you see that?”

Moon spotted the little turret. It extended out and up from the other structures, with a distinctive muzzle sticking out of the top. It was an emplacement for something like a Kishan fire weapon, part of the port’s defenses against the Fell.

They started off again, following another party of assorted groundlings, and shared the dumplings. A few were filled with more bug paste, the shell fragments and tiny wings scratchy in Moon’s throat, but the others had spicy sweet root centers or chopped fish.

Then Moon spotted a round peaked roof with a blue light atop it. A number of skylings of different sizes and shapes slept on the roof and the web structure above it. Stone had stopped to taste the air speculatively at the walkway to another food place. Moon nudged him. “There.”

They made their way to the little bridge that led to the portmaster’s house. It was a couple of levels tall, with open galleries allowing a view into the dimly lit interior. A few figures moved around inside and a dark blue groundling guarded the bridge, along with something wearing a lot of clothes and a shell over its head. Hoping it might be possible to skip meeting with a figure as official as a portmaster, Moon said, “We’re looking for a Kishan flying boat from Hia Iserae, with a Hian crew. We were told to ask here if one had been in dock.”

The blue groundling turned to consult the shellhead, who gestured for them to follow it and started across the bridge. Moon groaned under his breath and followed with Stone.

They stepped onto the lower gallery. The high ceilings let the cool breeze off the sea sweep through. The outer portion was occupied by smaller versions of the tall slim groundlings with the elongated curving heads. They all fled inside at Moon and Stone’s approach. The shellhead ignored the effect they were having on the house’s inhabitants and led them up a ramp to the second level.

A sling chair hung from the roof and sitting in it was a curved skull groundling, only this one was tall, probably a few heads taller than Moon when standing. Moon wasn’t sure if it was female or male or some other gender. The concealing robes, all in different shades of blue, didn’t reveal any hint. Moon was guessing this was the portmaster. Smaller versions of it were seated around on multi-colored cushions, apparently partaking of something that looked like smoke in glass bowls.

The shellhead addressed the tall groundling briefly in a deep voice, using a language Moon didn’t recognize. Then it turned and said in Kedaic, “Be seated, the portmaster will speak to you.”

Moon really didn’t want to sit down, he just wanted to ask their question, get an answer or not, and get out of here. His hesitation wasn’t obvious to anyone except Stone, who elbowed him hard in the ribs. They both sat down on the bare wood floor, and Moon pulled the pack off his shoulder in order to look like they had all the time in the Three Worlds.

The portmaster said, “What are you?” Its voice was light and high, and it spoke the Kedaic so fluidly and musically that it sounded like a different version of the language.

In some cultures, the question would have been offensive to the point of being a tacit invitation to violence, while in others, it might be the normal way to open a conversation with strangers. There was no way to tell which, so Moon just said, “We’re from the east, from the far end of the Abascene Peninsula.” This was true in one way, at least. It was where the Indigo Cloud court’s old colony had been, and where Moon had lived most of his life before Stone had found him.

The portmaster tilted its head in a way that Moon wanted to read as predatory. “But you look for Kishan craft?”

This close to the Imperial Kish borders, with ships from all along the coast passing through, the portmaster had to know they didn’t look much like the groundlings from the Jandera cities. But lots of different kinds of people, groundling and otherwise, lived in Kish. Again, it was hard to tell the portmaster’s attitude. “We were traveling with friends from Kish-Jandera. Hians traveling in a Kishan flying boat stole something from us, and we were told they came here.”

The others tittered and whispered to each other. On a Raksura, the portmaster’s expression would have been described as arch, except Moon would have slammed a Raksura across the room by now. It said, “Stole what?”

It clearly didn’t believe them, and Moon could understand why if not sympathize. He and Stone looked like people who traveled on foot and slept in the dirt, not like people who traveled on flying boats with cargo valuable enough to steal. But there was nothing else he could do but keep trying. He took a deep breath to weave a better lie, when Stone said, “People. They stole people.”

The room went silent. The sudden focused attention made Moon want to twitch. Stone continued, “From our friends, they stole a father and a grandfather. From us, a grandson and a granddaughter.”

Everyone looked at the portmaster. It held up one graceful hand. One of the little ones jumped up and Moon braced himself to move. But it went to a doorway into an interior room and returned almost immediately with what looked like a stack of thin plates of wood. As it carried the stack to the portmaster and held it up, Moon realized it was a record keeping system.

The portmaster leaned over the stack, turned the first plate over, and ran a finger across it. It said, “A ship listing its origin as Hia Iserae docked at stalk gal-alan, in the fourth position from the top, two days ago. They left the same night.” It made an open-handed gesture. “That is all we know here. If you go to that stalk and ask, there may be more information to be had.”

Stone was already standing and Moon shouldered his pack again and pushed to his feet. Stone said, “Which one is gal-alan?”

The one with the record stack handed it off to another helper and said, “I’ll show you.”

It walked with them down to the bridge back to the main walkway, and pointed. “Three stalks to the north, facing out from the sea.”

It darted back into the structure before Moon could say thank you. He followed Stone back to the walkway. “How did you know that would work?”

Stone glanced at him. “You mean telling the truth?”

Moon nodded. Stone just looked at him. “What?” Moon demanded.

Stone sighed and slung an arm around Moon’s shoulders. “Nothing.”

At the port of isl-Maharat, on the Selatran Rim

It was early evening and Jade stood alone on the deck of the sunsailer, waiting and watching the docks of the busy groundling port. The sun had still been up when Kalam and Rorra and others from the sunsailer’s crew had gone to meet with the local Kish leaders, to tell them about the Hians’ betrayal and ask for help in finding them. Now it was after dark, and they still hadn’t returned.

Jade wished she could talk to Niran and Diar, see what they thought about this delay, but the Golden Islander wind-ship had gone to tether at a docking tower a short distance inland. She was starting to wonder how difficult this place would be to escape from if it came to that.

The city was obviously huge, the buildings of the harbor all made of white stone and curved and twisted like shells, glowing with interior light. They were built atop a series of terraces from the harbor level all the way to the cliff tops, like a massive set of stairs. More terraces extended out and became bridges, enclosing and sheltering the harbor. Groundlings moved along the walkways and ramps between tiers and the docks, all going about their business, but the multi-leveled bridges that curved over the harbor’s entrance were beginning to feel like a trap. Jade was drowning in strange scents, from the dead fish smell that clung to the dock pilings to the combined miasma of all the strange groundling bodies. The constant movement of the other sailing craft at the crowded docks was endlessly distracting, making her prey reflex twitch.

She was in her Arbora form, to keep from drawing attention with her wings. Most of the others were inside resting, but Briar and Deft, one of Malachite’s warriors, were on watch, sitting atop the sunsailer’s cabin in their groundling forms. Looking over the harbor, Jade thought, I don’t know how Moon endured places like this for most of his life. The city was interesting to look at, but Jade couldn’t forget that it was heavily protected from the Fell by large fire weapon placements, and that all those groundlings in pretty fabrics and jewelry would be just as happy to use their weapons on Raksura.

It would be a relief to get in the air and track the rumors of Hian flying boats they had heard from other Kishan craft, and to rejoin Moon and Stone at the swampling port. And to prove to herself that she wasn’t an idiot to let the two consorts go off on their own, even with a piece of Kishan moss. Jade would feel better about that precaution once they managed to secure the help of another Kishan horticultural to track the moss and help search for the Hians. She suppressed another growl of impatience. Why was this taking so long? Didn’t the stupid groundlings in this city understand they had to hurry?

Then Briar called down from atop the cabin, “Jade, they’re coming back.”

Jade spotted the groundlings passing through the light from a tall metal lamp shaped like a giant seabird. They were all over the port, a warm white glow falling from their spread wings onto the walkways and bridges. Chime had been out on deck earlier drawing them for the Arbora and Delin. But it was only Rorra and Kalam who were returning; they had taken with them Esankel and Rasal, the most senior surviving members of the sunsailer’s crew.

Rorra limped as she came down the dock. It was a bad sign; Rorra was a sealing, and one of her legs ended in a fin, and the other had been badly damaged until only a stump remained. She had to wear special boots to allow her to walk on land, but while they seemed clunky and awkward, she normally didn’t limp unless she was exhausted.

Jade leaned down to give her a hand up the boarding ladder. Rorra had lightly scaled, pale green skin, and loose patches of flesh on either side of her throat that had once been gills. She wore heavy dark clothes and a Jandera harness, to hold her various weapons and devices. Jade caught a trace of Rorra’s distinctive scent, and remembered to filter out pheromones. It was a communication scent to sealings, but it could trigger aggressive impulses and other unfortunate effects on Raksura and even some groundlings.

Rorra nodded in gratitude as she climbed onto the deck. “Are you all right?” Jade asked.

Rorra pushed her gray braids back and frowned toward the city. She frowned all the time, and between that and her communication scent, it could be hard to read her emotions. After traveling with her, and nearly getting killed a few times with her, Jade was used to it. Rorra said, grimly, “It didn’t go well.”

Kalam pulled himself up the ladder behind her, saying, “I sent Esankel and Rasal to hire a horticultural. Rasal, she knows this port, and Esankel, she knows what to ask, to judge if the horticultural is good enough to track the moss samples. I had to come back here to warn the others.”

“‘Warn?” Jade said.

Kalam took a sharp anxious breath. “I need to tell the crew—Those who don’t want to go with us must stay here. Some of them must stay with the ship, but others will want to return to Kedmar. I have to send someone—” He started to turn away.

Jade caught his wrist and pulled him back to face her. “Rorra can talk to the crew. You need to tell me what happened.” She wasn’t as good at recognizing the difference between a young groundling and an older one the way Moon was, and the fact that Kalam was only recently considered an adult wasn’t always obvious. It was obvious now, though. Kalam was Janderan, and to Jade’s eye almost identical to the species called Janderi, except Janderi were shorter and more thickly built where Janderan tended to be tall and lean. His hair was short and tightly curled and he had tough, reddish-brown skin with the texture of rough pebbled rock. Like the rest of the Kish-Jandera crew, he wore an open coat of a richly textured fabric over loose pants and sandals.

Rorra made a gesture of agreement and started away down the deck. Kalam said, “We’ll need to take the wind-ship after the Hians.”

It was faster than a Kishan flying boat anyway, as far as Jade could tell. She didn’t think that was the problem. She said, “What did the Kishan leaders say to you?”

Kalam seemed to brace himself. “They don’t believe me. Us. Any of us.”

Jade felt her spines try to lift and forced them back to neutral. She said, “What? They think all of you are lying? Making it up? At what point is that a rational thing to do?”

Kalam’s voice shook a little and this time Jade read the emotion he was struggling with as suppressed rage. “They think it’s some private quarrel. They think we’re fighting over ‘scholarly nonsense.’”

Jade felt her jaw go tight. “They think you lie about your dead.” She let go of Kalam’s wrist so she wouldn’t squeeze too hard.

“They think we had some battle with the Hians, over the artifacts from the city.” He hesitated, then reluctantly admitted, “They didn’t believe Esankel or Rasal because they’re Janderi. I’m the only high-ranking Janderan left. It isn’t like that in Kedmar, where we live, but this is a provincial city, mostly Janderan, and they know the Hians as friendly traders. If Magrim, or Kellimdar, had survived . . .” He made a frustrated gesture. “I don’t know if they think I’m lying or deluded.”

The Hians had killed Magrim outright, to keep him from using his skill as a horticultural to track their flying boat, and Jade had felt certain that Vendoin was also responsible for Kellimdar’s death. He had been given the same poison as the Kish who had survived, but there was nothing to show that something else hadn’t been forced down his throat once he was unconscious. Kellimdar was on the same level of authority as Callumkal, and if he had been with Kalam to support him and second his accusation of Vendoin and the Hians, they probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. She began, “We need to get out of here before they—”

Then Malachite was suddenly standing beside them.

Kalam flinched, and Jade managed not to hiss. Malachite was a head taller than Jade and broader in the shoulder, and it should have been impossible for her to approach so closely without Jade knowing. Yet here she was.

Jade said, “You heard all that?” Of course she heard all that. Malachite’s scales were a dark green, webbed over with a layer of scar tissue that obscured her web of secondary color, and she faded into the shadows. All queens could keep other consorts, warriors, and Arbora from shifting, but Jade had never encountered a queen who could use her mental connections to other Raksura in the ways Malachite could. She had never encountered another queen who had needed to do what Malachite had done to save her court.

Malachite moved one spine in a way Jade knew by now meant assent. All Malachite’s concentrated attention was on Kalam. “Do they know there are Raksura here?”

“Yes.” Kalam was a little accustomed to Malachite by now, and Raksura in general, and managed to bear the scrutiny. “I had to tell them, to explain what had happened. I told them about the Fell, too. Not the half-Fell,” he added hastily. “I didn’t know how to explain it, and Rorra thought it best not to, that it would just confuse them.”

Good for Rorra, Jade thought. They were in enough trouble as it was. “We need to get out of here.”

“Not through the groundling city,” Malachite said. She tilted her head toward Jade. “We’ll fly out to sea, toward the barrier islands we passed, and the wind-ship can meet us there.”

Jade managed not to say that she had thought of that already. She turned to call up to Briar, “Go tell the warriors to get ready. Tell them to leave nothing behind, we won’t be coming back to this boat. We’re going to the Golden Isles wind-ship.”

Briar jumped down to the walkway and headed for the nearest hatch, and Kalam’s shoulders slumped in relief. Maybe he had nursed a suspicious fear that the Raksura would desert him, too.

Since the Hians had betrayed them, things had been tense with Kalam. He was Callumkal’s son, and young to be facing the abduction of his parent and the responsibility for trying to get help from the other Kish-Jandera. The deaths of the crew who hadn’t survived the poison had been hard enough for him. It had just made the situation worse to find out that the foundation builder artifact that the Hians had plotted to steal had been brought aboard the sunsailer by the Raksura, even if it was inadvertent. Then Jade had had to tell him that most of the Raksura could speak Kedaic, that she had ordered the others to deliberately deceive the Kish-Jandera because she hadn’t trusted Callumkal’s motives. That hadn’t been an easy conversation.

It had been better before Moon and Stone had left; Kalam trusted Moon more than he did her.

Now Jade met his gaze and said, “We’ll find your father, Kalam. And Delin, and Bramble and Merit. I swear to you I’ll be standing with you when we find the Hians.”

Kalam looked away for an instant, to gather himself. He conquered the emotion, then said firmly, “I’ll tell Rorra. I need to give the crew their travel funds, buy supplies for the wind-ship. We have to hurry. I’ll send Sarandel to Niran and Diar at the air docks to tell them where to meet us—” He headed down the deck.

Jade faced Malachite, who looked out over the harbor, eyes narrowed. Jade had been around her enough not to take the lack of attention as an insult. Malachite was not a normal queen anymore than Moon was a normal consort. Malachite said, “Is there time for his preparations?”

Jade said, “I think so. It sounds as if the Kishan here underestimate him so much they think he’ll sit here on this boat and keep begging them for help.” She had never wanted to count on aid from Kish, the way Rorra and the other groundlings had. After the Hians’ betrayal, Jade hadn’t wanted to count on anything but her own warriors and the Golden Islanders, who were proven allies with their own stake in finding the Hians. “The sooner we can get away from here, the sooner we can catch up to Moon and Stone at the swampling port.”

Malachite tilted her head to eye her. “You expected me to object to that.”

Jade had been surprised when Malachite agreed to the plan; sending two consorts off alone to scout after murderous groundlings in strange territory was so unheard of as to be impossible for most Raksura to contemplate. Moon should be back at the colony with his clutch, guarded by warriors and Arbora. Stone, as a line-grandfather, had more license for his behavior, but Jade felt sure no one in any Raksuran court had ever contemplated this much license. But they didn’t have a choice.

Jade knew Moon had come to see Malachite as a powerful ally, but she still wasn’t sure how Malachite saw him. Their relationship was different from anything between a birthqueen and the only surviving consort of her last clutch ought to be. For most of his life Moon had thought his birthcourt had been wiped out. No, for most of his life Moon hadn’t had a clue that anything like a court existed, she reminded herself. Jade said, “It did surprise me, but then I don’t know what you think about anything, least of all my consort.”

Malachite moved her spines so slightly Jade wasn’t sure if it was indicating anything or they had been stirred by the breeze. “At the moment Moon’s experience is far more valuable than his ability to breed, and we do not have the luxury of pretending that he is anything other than what he is.”

Jade reminded herself that from Malachite that wasn’t an insult. She forced her spines and claws to relax, and made herself say, evenly, “I’m glad we’re in agreement on that.”

South of Gwalish Mar

Some distance outside the port city, Moon and Stone found a ruined statue that was so worn by weather and vines all you could see was that it had four legs and was crouching. Though the body was protected a little by the heavy growth of trees around it, the head was above the canopy and had worn down to a featureless ball. A cavity that had been knocked in its chest at some point made a good place to rest. It was padded with turns worth of palm leaves and rotting vegetation, and Moon was so exhausted he slept the rest of the night curled against Stone’s side.

He woke at dawn, and crawled out of their nest to sit on the edge of the cavity. The air was cool and damp, laced with the scent of the sea and the swampling city. Stone was still deeply asleep, and Moon felt bleary and half-conscious. It was a sure sign they were both short on food.

He wondered how close the others were, if they had reached the mainland yet, if they had gotten help from the Kish the way Kalam hoped. Every instinct said he and Stone were close behind the Hians, that they needed to keep moving. He hoped Jade didn’t regret sending them ahead.

Moon had spent the last night before they had left with Jade, Chime, and Balm, up on the roof of the wind-ship’s stern cabin. It held the ship’s cistern, and was far enough away from the steering cabin and the sleeping areas down in the hull for relative privacy. Not that Raksura in general cared much about privacy for sex, but Moon still did, and he had been around Golden Islanders and Jandera enough by now to know that they appreciated it too. It didn’t help that his mother was on this wind-ship somewhere, with Shade and Lithe and the rest of the warriors. Stone, at least, had snuck off down to the sunsailer to see Rorra.

It had been quiet then with not much movement except for the few warriors taking their turn at watch. Jade was sitting up, still in her Arbora form, looking into the distance as the wind pulled at her frills. Moon lay on his side next to her, Chime pressed against his back and half wrapped around him, mostly asleep. Balm lay curled on Jade’s other side, dozing. Jade’s tail coiled around Moon’s arm, and he ran his fingers down the tiny frills along its length. He could tell her thoughts were weighing on her, and to distract her he said, “You can’t see land yet, can you?”

It was partly a joke; Rorra had calculated that they were still some distance from the coast.

Jade tilted her head toward him, but didn’t take her gaze off the dark horizon. “It’s a long way. Are you sure you don’t want to wait another day at least?”

Moon had recovered from the Fell poison and had had nothing to do but rest and reflect on all his mistakes as they made their way back toward Kish. The urge to go after the Hians had been burning in him, he couldn’t bear to wait another day. “I’m sure.” Because it was easier to blame it on Stone, he added, “It’s been hard enough convincing Stone to wait this long.”

Jade had bared her fangs. “I should never have let any of you come on this trip to begin with. Especially the Arbora.”

Balm’s eyes were open, her brow furrowed worriedly. From Jade’s tone, she was about to go back to the conversation they had already had many times, where Jade tried to take sole responsibility for everything that had gone wrong since they left the court. What made it worse was that it inevitably led to the other conversation, the one where they talked about what might be happening to Merit and Bramble. If Moon dwelled on that too much, the mix of fury and fear made it hard to think, let alone plan.

Moon nudged Chime gently until Chime woke enough to nip his ear and let him go, rolling over and sinking back into sleep. Moon released Jade’s tail and rolled over to nuzzle her hip.

Jade said, “I know you’re trying to distract me.”

It would be the last distraction until they found the Hians, so Moon had meant to make it count. Then Jade had growled and dragged him into her lap, and he had tried to make her forget everything that had gone wrong.

Now Moon missed her, and missed the others, in a way that felt like a knot of pain in his chest. He shook away the memories, then stretched, shifted, and leapt out of the cave to hunt.

He found a swampy stretch of water not far from the statue’s left rear foot. It was surrounded by ferns, and the deceptively still pool was filled with large armored lizards. He killed one, carried it back for Stone, and found it gone by the time he got back with a second one.

Moon ate the tail of the second lizard, left the rest for Stone, and went up on top of the statue’s head where shallow basins had formed and collected rainwater. He sat on his heels and started to clean the blood and flesh out of his claws.

The sky was clear with few clouds, and the wind was light but steady. He spotted a few flying boats in the distance, two leaving the city but another one coming in. It meant that for now at least there had been no Fell attack.

Stone’s big dark shape flew past. He circled around and dropped down onto the statue’s head, then shifted to groundling and wandered over to sit beside the puddle.

Moon watched the blood spiral through the water. “I’m guessing you don’t think we should wait for the others.”

Stone rolled one shoulder and scratched under his arm. “What, are you worried about what Jade will think?”

Moon gave him a glare. “Yes. That doesn’t mean I don’t think we should keep going.” Flying boats tended to take a direction and stick to it, not having to navigate around anything except mountains. If the boat hadn’t been cautious enough to change direction once it was out of sight of the city, they still had a good chance to catch it.

“If we hadn’t come ahead and found that moss on the berth, it would have dried out by the time the others got here. And there would have been nobody to tell us about the second Hian ship and the switch.” Stone squinted into the distance. “I don’t want to take a chance on missing something else.”

Moon took the waterskins out of his pack and started to fill them from a clean puddle. “We need to leave the Hian moss for the others. We can put it in a bundle with some of the moss they’re using to track us, and hide it in that hole we slept in, that should work.” He sat back on his heels, glancing around. “We need to mark the top of this statue to help them find it. Something that won’t draw attention if another flying boat spots it, but that they’ll know is from us. It can’t be writing, because the Fell might see it. And it can’t be anything that might get blown away by the wind—”

Stone said, “You sound like an Arbora.”

Moon knew this was Stone trying to start a fight to relieve tension. He shrugged his spines, knowing it would be more irritating than anything he could think of saying.

Arbora liked to talk and they liked to figure things out, which often meant their favorite pastime was to analyze every aspect of a situation from every angle. It also meant that they were very good at coming up with solutions to problems. Which was why Bramble and Merit, with Delin and finally Chime, had been able to discover the way into the foundation builder city.

Stone, faced with Moon’s refusal to argue, said, “Draw a flying boat on it.”

That . . . would work. Moon turned the fastener on the last waterskin and dug the inkstone and paper out of his pack. He handed it to Stone to write the message. After a couple of turns of intermittent study, Moon could read Raksuran well enough but his writing was terrible. They were going to need some rocks to scratch the drawing on the statue’s head. He tried not think about how Jade would react when she found out that not only had they flown ahead instead of waiting, but that a kethel from the Fellborn queen’s flight was following them.

By the time Moon came back with a rock that made a satisfactory dark scratch through the statue’s weathered coating, Stone had filled a page with the elegantly flowing oblongs of Raksuran writing. Stone made a bundle of it and the mosses in a cloth waterproofed with mountain-tree sap, then went down to hide it in the cave where they had slept. Moon’s drawing skills weren’t much better than his writing, but he got started with the rock.

When Stone returned, Moon said, “You think Bramble and Merit—” He hesitated, not wanting to finish that sentence. The Hians had taken them as hostages, but Moon had been afraid they would decide that since they had Merit, they didn’t need Bramble. He was also afraid Bramble would lose her temper, try to kill the Hians, and be killed herself. Or that the artifact would require some test to prove it would kill Fell, and the Hians might use it on Bramble or Merit or both of them. There were so many things to be afraid of at the moment he couldn’t pick just one.

“Bramble’s smart,” Stone said, handing Moon a fresh rock. “Just because she’s never had to use her brains for manipulating Hians doesn’t mean she can’t do it.”

“Manipulating,” Moon said, thinking about it. Vendoin, the Hian leader who had been plotting this apparently since she had first left Hia Iserae for the Kish-Jandera city of Kedmar to work with Callumkal, was a master manipulator. As Kalam had said, she had known him and his father for turns, since Kalam was a child. But they were Janderan and Bramble was a Raksura. More importantly, she was an Arbora. “Vendoin never did think any of us were that smart, did she.”

“No. She thought we were smart animals, not smart people.” Stone stood to survey Moon’s handiwork. He indicated the drawing with one toe. “What’s that?”

“That” was meant to be a fan-folded sail on a wind-ship’s central mast, except it looked nothing like the image in Moon’s head and he had no idea how to make it any better. He said, “Guess.”

Stone sighed, like Moon was the one being a problem. “Ready?”

Moon pushed to his feet and shouldered the pack. They were going south on the random word of a sleepy bladder-boat groundling, and their own theory that the Hians had switched flying boats to keep a Kish horticultural from tracking them. It was a risk, and they were gambling for the lives of their friends.

Stone walked to where the statue’s head started to curve down, shifted, and leapt into the air. Just before Moon followed, he caught a hint of Fell stench in the wind, a reminder that they weren’t the only ones searching for the Hians.

As they waited, stuck in their cage, Bramble considered Delin’s hint that she should pretend to be weak, and decided to give the Hians some proof of it. She would stop eating.

Merit wasn’t keen on it when she informed him of this decision, but mentors always thought they knew everything, particularly mentors who were younger than you. He said, “And if you just die, what then?”

“I won’t do it right away, that would be stupid.” Someone might connect it with Delin’s visit and suspect a trick. “I’ll eat less, gradually, each time they feed us. I don’t know if they’ll notice, but if I need to pretend to be sick later, it’ll add—” She waved a hand. “Verisimilitude.”

Merit sighed. He sat back against the mossy wall of their prison, small and tired. He had been trying to augur but had admitted that either the Fell poison was still interfering with his sight or the situation was so confused right now there was nothing to see. The scale pattern was fading from their skin, but slowly, and they still couldn’t shift. “Maybe I should do it instead.”

“They aren’t going to let you near them,” Bramble explained, almost patiently. “Vendoin saw too much of what you can do.”

“She saw you, too.” Merit sounded sulky, more like a fledgling warrior than an adult mentor. Bramble decided to save pointing that out for the moment when they needed a violent argument to clear the air.

“Vendoin saw me making sure everyone ate, and had clean bedding,” she explained. “She saw me putting up the tent. She saw me with you and Delin figuring out the way into the city, but she didn’t see how much I helped. That was bad, I shouldn’t have done that, but we didn’t know what she was then. At least she didn’t see it from close up. She thinks I’m a—” She lowered her voice, because the Raksuran language had no real word for this, and she didn’t know if Altanic did either. She said in Kedaic, “—servant.”

Merit frowned. “What is that?”

“Someone who does things for someone else, like wash their clothes and bring the food—”

“Everybody does those things.”

Bramble tried to explain. “For yourself, not for other people.”

“Of course you do it for other people.” Merit was clearly exasperated. “If you’re doing it for yourself you might as well do it for everybody nearby who needs it at the time.”

“Royal Aeriat don’t do it.”

Now Merit was scandalized. “If we let the queens and the consorts do things like that, everyone would laugh at us! Even lazy warriors wouldn’t let that happen. What kind of shit court would let—”

“Merit, shut up and let me talk,” Bramble growled. “It’s a thing for groundlings, that’s why we don’t have a word for it.” You could serve someone in Raksuran, like you might serve tea or food, but it didn’t mean the same thing in Kedaic. It was like the way the Raksuran word “lazy” didn’t have a case for Arbora, only warriors. “It’s what Vendoin thinks I am. Magrim and Esankel thought so too, but they asked me about it, and I tried to explain how the court doesn’t work like a Jandera settlement. They understood, but I doubt they ever explained it to Vendoin.”

Merit shook his head, still confused. “But the warriors were helping you. I wasn’t, very much, because I was busy.”

“Vendoin didn’t see much of that. And she’s . . .” Bramble didn’t know quite how to explain it. “She’s not a very agile thinker. Not like us and Delin, the way we talk about things and change our minds. Once she gets an idea, she doesn’t change her mind about it.” Bramble thought it was a sad way to be. If you weren’t entertaining a dozen different possibilities and probabilities at once, what was there to think about?

“I can see that.” Merit let out his breath and leaned his head back against the wall. “So how does this help us?”

“Some groundlings look down on the ones who are servants, and think they do all the work because they’re inferior. Hians do, Esankel told me that.” Bramble grinned, baring her teeth. “It means Vendoin thinks I’m weak, and not smart.”

Merit was still frowning. “I’m not sure you’re right about this. I understand that you think you can trick her, but . . . Even if we get out of this cage, and let Delin and Callumkal out of their cages, wherever they are, we can’t fly, Bramble. We could steal some of those flying packs, but the Hians would just chase us, or shoot us with the fire weapons. We can’t go fast enough to get away from them, like Aeriat could. We’re stuck on this boat.”

Bramble slumped back. That was the flaw in her plan. Merit continued, “Though if we did try to get away, the Hians would have to stop while they were catching us. That would give the others more time to find us.”

Without discussing it, they had both decided to pretend the others had survived and were hunting for them. Mostly because the alternative was unthinkable.

Merit added, regretfully, “It’s not like we can kill all the Hians.”

Bramble blinked, struck by the perfect simplicity of the idea. It was an idea still, not a plan. It wouldn’t be a plan until she could figure out some things, and make contact with Delin again. And most importantly, trick the Hians into letting her out. She said softly, “It’s not like they have poison on board.”

Merit turned to stare at her, and hissed in speculation.

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 followed Malachite out over the plain, towards the foothills in the distance.

The territory was even more inhospitable, and the occasional groundling canal curved away from this direction. Jade was glad she had had the chance to eat and rest briefly; when Malachite had said to follow her, she had meant now, immediately, and the reason was urgent.

Malachite had said, “I scented Fell. They’ve been following us at a distance, probably all the way from the coast. They’ve dug in around these hills. Once the wind-ship reaches the end of these plains, they’ll move again.”

Jade had squinted into the distance. “How do we approach them?”

Malachite said, “We fly in,” and leapt into the air.

Jade hissed, looked around at Chime, Niran, and the others. They were all staring, startled and uncertain. She said, “Keep moving. We’ll catch up.”

“Take care!” Niran had shouted after her.

Now they came in low to approach the hills at an angle, sweeping across the stretch of dry sandy ground where the land sloped up. “They’ll see us,” Jade called out.

Malachite didn’t respond, and Jade snarled to herself, I suppose that’s the point.

As they crested the top of the first hill, Jade caught a glimpse of a camp nestled below, where dark shapes moved between makeshift shelters. It was such an odd sight, she thought she had imagined it.

Malachite clearly had no intention of being unobserved. She made a slow circle over the encampment as Jade followed her.

The dakti scouts must have seen them but none took to the air. The Fell had dug into the sandy ground between the outcrops in the base of the hills, creating shallow caves and rough lean-tos made of brush. Dakti peered out from around the rocks, and there were three large pale figures just inside the shadow of a cave. Even from this height, they were clearly kethel in their groundling forms. Jade spotted rough fire pits and the outline of a latrine area. Piles of bones lay nearby, but the broken skulls matched those of the grasseaters the Opal Night warriors had hunted in the plain.

It hadn’t been her imagination. It is an encampment, like the Arbora would make, she thought. Not exactly like; Arbora would have arranged it so it was invisible from the air. But this wasn’t something Fell did. Everything in a flight was geared toward the comfort of the rulers and the progenitor. Those shelters and firepits had been built for the dakti and the kethel.

Malachite finished her leisurely pass and slid across the wind, then dropped to land on a flat rock. Jade followed and landed next to her. Malachite furled her wings and just stood there. Jade did the same, and wondered if they were about to be attacked by the entire flight. It would certainly be a dramatic way to die. She doubted Moon and Balm and all the others would see it that way.

Finally Jade had to break the silence. “The kethel dug caves in the sand. I didn’t know Fell did that.” At least one large flight had used a giant sac, made from the kethels’ secretions, as a kind of shelter, but according to Moon, even it had used fragments of stolen groundling-made ships as supports. It was far more common for Fell to use the ruined remnants of other species’ settlements for shelter, usually while feeding on the other species.

“They don’t,” Malachite said.

Jade tightened her jaw. The urge to disturb that impermeable exterior was hard to fight. “So this is the flight of the half-Fell queen. You want to see her. You want to make sure she isn’t one of your consort’s fledglings.” Queens could see bloodline resemblances that were invisible even to other Raksura; Jade had seen the Fellborn queen only once, briefly, and in the dark. She hadn’t noticed any resemblance to Moon or his clutchmate Celadon, or to Shade, but she might have missed it.

Malachite turned to stare down at Jade and whatever temporary amity there had been between them snapped like a cord. It was as if Jade stood out here not with another Raksuran queen, but with a predator, pitiless and filled with silent rage.

Jade didn’t change her expression, didn’t give in to the temptation to snarl or hiss, refused to let her spines flare. You asked for this, she told herself.

A Fell flight had destroyed the eastern branch of Opal Night, killed much of the court, and taken away prisoners for forced breeding. Malachite had destroyed the flight to retrieve them, but not in time to save her consort. She had managed to save Shade and Lithe and the other half-Fell babies. Jade could imagine the thought that she might have missed one, that a fledgling might have been taken away to another Fell flight, would haunt her.

Stone had said that for Malachite that turns-old disaster had happened yesterday, was still happening, would always be happening. Jade should have remembered that. She said, “Moon said the half-Fell queen was young, almost still a fledgling herself. She couldn’t be from your consort’s bloodline.”

Malachite gave no sign that Jade could read, not one spine dip or tail twitch. But suddenly the deadly stillness was gone, and it was like the person poured back into the predator’s shell. Malachite said, “Moon may have been mistaken. He hasn’t had much chance to observe fledgling queens as they mature.”

Jade kept her spines neutral, glad Balm hadn’t been here to see that. She would have heard about it for the rest of her life.

From the camp, two figures leapt into the air, a ruler and a dakti. No, not a ruler, Jade thought grimly as the two shapes circled down. A queen.

The Fellborn queen and a dakti landed a dozen paces away, at the edge of the rock. The queen had the Fell crest and the Raksuran spines, but her scales were matte black, like a ruler or a Raksuran consort. Looking closely, Jade saw she had the contrasting color pattern of a queen, but it was in a lighter shade of black, barely visible.

Jade slid a glance at Malachite. She couldn’t see a bloodline resemblance between the Fellborn queen and any of the surviving issue of Dusk, Malachite’s consort. Malachite dipped one spine in a negative, actually making the gesture broad enough for Jade to read. Jade felt all the relief that Malachite wouldn’t show. That’s one less thing to worry about.

There was nothing different about the dakti, at least as far as Jade could see or scent. Dakti were half the size of an adult warrior, with armored plates on their backs and shoulders in place of scales. Their jaws were oddly long with the double row of fangs exposed. This one crouched at the Fellborn queen’s feet, watching them warily. No, it is different, Jade thought. She had never seen a dakti with that much intelligent awareness in its eyes.

“You found us,” the queen said. She spoke Raksuran. Her gaze went from Jade to Malachite and back. “We thought we were hiding.”

Malachite said nothing. Jade set her jaw. She suspected she was going to have to be the one to do all the talking, probably right up until Malachite abruptly decided to change the plan, whatever it was. Jade said, “You followed us here from the sel-Selatra.”

The Fellborn queen dropped her gaze and dragged her foot claws across the rock. The dakti studied them with doubt and suspicion. The queen said, “We were going the same way.”

Jade tilted her head, resisting the urge to show her fangs. “Do you mean to attack us?”

The queen looked up at her, spines flicking. “No.” Then she shifted. Her form flowed into a figure who could have been mistaken for a Raksuran warrior. But her skin was bone white, like the groundling form of a Fell ruler, like Shade, and her dark hair was long and straight. But unlike Shade, there were patches of dark scales on her cheeks, down her neck and shoulders. She still had her frills, but they were heavier than Jade’s, with a texture more like hair. It was like a queen’s Arbora form blended with a ruler’s groundling form. She wore a loose dark tunic, patched and stained around the hem. She said, “Is this what you look like when you change?”

“No,” Jade said.

“Will you show me?”

Jade’s spines wanted to lift and she forced them back into a neutral angle. “No.”

The queen’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

Moon had been right, it was oddly like talking to a fledgling. A frighteningly strong fledgling with dakti and kethel at her call. Jade drew breath to answer, but Malachite said, “Did they name you?”

The Fell queen flinched, staring at Malachite. The dakti edged closer to her knee and its wings fluttered nervously.

Jade stared at Malachite, frowning. The Fell queen acted as if she had forgotten Malachite was there, or somehow never seen her. Jade knew Malachite could make herself so unobtrusive she seemed to disappear. This was the first time it had occurred to her that Malachite might actually be able to effectively disappear, by somehow using the same ability that allowed a queen to connect with her court and to keep any Aeriat and Arbora from shifting. No, that’s not it. The Fellborn queen saw her, I saw her look at Malachite. But had Malachite been able to make the Fellborn queen forget she was there?

Watching Malachite with suspicion now, the Fell queen didn’t answer.

She said, “I’m Malachite of Opal Night. That is Jade of Indigo Cloud. What are you called?”

Jade had a twinge at the idea of Fell knowing her name and her court’s name. Hearing your name spoken by Fell was never a good thing, though concealing it from them was nearly impossible.

The silence held for so long Jade didn’t think the Fellborn queen would answer. Then she said, “Consolation. The . . . The flight doesn’t have a name. Yet.”

Jade’s chest went tight. She threw another glance at Malachite, unable to help herself. Apparently unmoved, Malachite said, “Who gave you that name?”

“The consort. Our consort.” Consolation hesitated. “Is it a good name?”

He loved her, Jade thought, and suppressed a hiss. “Consolation” wasn’t a name for hatred or irony or even wry regret. Jade wanted to ask what the consort’s name was, if he had said what court he came from, but she reminded herself that it was in the past, that he was as dead as the progenitor who had stolen him, and there was nothing they could do about it now. If she thought about what life had been like for him in a Fell flight for who knew how many turns, she wouldn’t be able to keep her temper and somebody was going to die. She couldn’t imagine what Malachite was feeling under her impenetrable expression.

Malachite said, “Yes, it’s a good name. The progenitor let him raise you.”

Consolation drew her foot claws over the rock again. “She had to. The others didn’t know how to take care of me.” She tilted her head to study Malachite. “A mistake. She made mistakes.”

“You killed her,” Malachite said, still even and expressionless. “What about the rulers?”

“I didn’t kill the older ones.” She looked down at the dakti. It grimaced at her. She looked up again and said, “Someone else did that.”

The dakti and kethel, Jade thought. The progenitor had made mistakes all right.

Consolation looked from Jade to Malachite, eyes narrow. “You’re a queen too?” she said.

Startled, Jade realized that she must have been the first Raksuran queen that Consolation had ever seen, that night outside the foundation builder city. That she and Malachite were different enough that it might be confusing to unaccustomed eyes. Malachite said, “Yes.”

Still crouching, the dakti nudged Consolation’s knee. Consolation twitched at the reminder and said, “Why do you want to talk now? You didn’t before.”

Jade countered, “Why are you still following us?”

“Because you’re here.” Consolation seemed to think it was obvious. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you go back to the Reaches? He said the groundlings took a weapon out of the old sea city, is that why?”

Rage burned in Jade’s chest at the reminder that this deceptively naive queen had tried to steal Moon off the sunsailer. Would have stolen him, if River and Rorra hadn’t delayed her long enough for Malachite to arrive.

Malachite said nothing, and Jade forced herself to answer, “That was true.”

Then Malachite said, “They stole two of our Arbora, and two of our groundlings.”

Jade managed to control her reaction down to a tail lash. It couldn’t be a good idea to give that much information to Fell, but Malachite apparently didn’t care.

Consolation frowned at the ground again. “I saw that. Some of that. I didn’t understand it.” The dakti nudged her again and she stepped out of its reach.

“You did understand it,” Malachite said. Her head tilted. “You tried to steal the consort.”

Consolation’s head jerked up to meet her gaze, as if that slight change in tone had been a shout. “Not like that,” she said. She was angry, and the sheer audacity of that made Jade’s fury rise until she could taste blood in her throat. But Consolation said, “We need help. We need someone to tell us things. The young rulers are useless. Our consort died. We need . . .” She looked from Jade to Malachite again, and let the words die away, as if it was just occurring to her that two Raksuran queens might not react well to talk of stealing consorts, whatever the reason. The dakti tugged belatedly on her ankle.

Malachite said, “You wanted a consort to help you rule the flight.”

“There’s a lot I don’t know,” Consolation muttered, and kicked at a drift of sand. She said suddenly, “The other Fell hate us. They want to use us to fight you, like back at the sea city.”

“Where is that flight?” Jade asked. The last thing they needed was another Fell flight involved in this. “We know you fought them.”

“They’re here somewhere,” Consolation admitted. “Their rulers told the rest of the Fell what happened.” She hesitated, then finished, “The Fell think everything that’s wrong is because of you. That it was all a big trick.” The dakti stared at her in apparent shock. “What?” she asked it. “What do we owe the Fell? They hate us.”

Jade didn’t understand. “What’s all a big trick?”

“Me, and the others.” She indicated the dakti with her foot. Malachite’s gaze went to it and it huddled in on itself, covering its face with a wing. Consolation said, “That it was a trick to make us.”

“A trick,” Malachite repeated. Her spines didn’t move, but it was as if the air around her had gotten colder. Jade’s fangs itched in reaction. For once, she knew what Malachite was thinking. All that pain the Fell had caused, the consorts and Arbora stolen for forced breeding, the courts destroyed, the fate of the crossbred offspring not strong enough to survive. A trick.

Apparently oblivious to Malachite’s reaction, Consolation said, “Making Fell who are part Raksura just gets flights killed, and there’s never any advantage, like was promised.”

“We weren’t the ones who promised them,” Jade said, part of her attention on Malachite. She couldn’t decide if an explosion was imminent or not. She had always thought that Malachite’s self-control was more daunting than her rage, but she might be about to be proved wrong. “Raksura had nothing to do with it.”

Consolation watched them, the breeze stirring her frills, her brow furrowing as if it was just occurring to her that something was wrong. Jade’s jaw hurt from gritting her teeth. She wasn’t certain what Malachite wanted from this meeting, if she was asking the right questions, if there was any point to this. In a small voice, Consolation said, “That’s what they think.”

Jade snarled, mostly at herself. She thought they had heard everything they needed to hear. “We should go.”

She was surprised when Malachite lifted one spine in agreement and turned away.

“No,” Consolation said, startled. “Stay!”

The dakti tugged on Consolation’s ankle again. It’s afraid she’ll fly off with us, Jade realized suddenly.

Then Malachite whipped around, hissing in a breath to taste the air. The abrupt movement made Jade flinch back a pace. Consolation leapt back and ducked. The dakti almost fell off the outcrop.

Malachite tilted her head, and said to Consolation, “If this is a clumsy attempt at a trap, none of you will live to regret it.”

Jade tasted the air, but Fell stench was already heavy through these hills. She threw a glance at Consolation, who just looked confused. “What trap?” Consolation said.

Suddenly a dark shape appeared over the hill from the camp. It was the size of an adolescent warrior, its limbs still gawky and its wing control awkward. It made a keening sound of alarm as it dropped to a landing on the outcrop down from Consolation and the dakti. It called out to her in the Fell language, and that was when Jade realized it was a young ruler. Consolation shifted into her winged form, and said, “He hears the Fell. The other Fell. They’re coming.”

The dakti made a squawk of alarm, and said in a low gravelly voice, “He’s not here. What do we do?”

Then Jade caught fresh Fell stench on the wind, coming from the northeast. Another flight was coming. She snarled, “If you planned this—”

“No,” Consolation growled at her. “Not a trap. They hate us because they know we fought the flight at the old sea city.” She glared up at the sky, gathering herself to leap. “They think we’re allies with you.”

Malachite said, “Stop.”

Consolation froze, then shook out her spines and stared at Malachite in confusion. “What?”

Malachite said, “Don’t take to the air yet. Wait until their kethel are overhead. I’ll take the first one.”

“I know.” Consolation backed away. The dakti and the ruler scrambled down the outcrop. “I know what to do. I just forgot, because I was mad.” She whirled around and bounced up, snapped her wings out for one powerful flap, and then dove behind the hill.

Jade turned to Malachite, incredulous. “We’re going to help them fight off a Fell flight.”

Malachite didn’t take her gaze off the sky. “I am.”

A growl rose in Jade’s throat. She shouldn’t have been surprised. The bloodline resemblance between Moon and Malachite was particularly strong, though Moon couldn’t see it. And you have five of them back home in the nurseries, she reminded herself.

The first kethel swept into sight, then two more not far behind. They were the largest Fell, and always the first sent to attack. The lead one was probably half the size of the Golden Isles wind-ship, the other two a little smaller. Like all Fell, their armored scales were a deep unreflective black, but they had distinctive halos of horns protecting their heads.

They were flying far too close together. Jade bared her teeth. “They don’t think much of the half-Fell.” Bunching like that might be a good tactic for approaching groundlings, but not for fighting in the air. Perhaps they were relying on surprise; Fell weren’t good scent hunters, and if Malachite and Jade hadn’t been here, the half-Fell flight might have been taken unawares.

Malachite moved one spine. “They wouldn’t. The progenitors and the rulers think of these half-Fell as something to be used against us. It’s a mistake.” She spared Jade a glance. “Perhaps their penultimate mistake.”

This time when Malachite crouched to leap, Jade matched her and they burst into the air together.

Malachite hit the first, largest kethel in the throat. Jade struck its shoulder and scrambled up past the horns, going for its eyes. She had known Malachite’s size and strength gave her an advantage, and she had seen how fast she was in battle. But it was still a shock that by the time Jade reached the kethel’s head, dark blood fountained up from its throat and its wings flapped in frantic alarm. Jade shoved off it, twisted away from a wild grab by the second kethel, then landed on its back. She spared a glance down and saw the half-Fell flight rise out of the hills in a black cloud.

Malachite was so fast, leaving so much carnage in her wake, it was hard for Jade to find targets. She caught glimpses of Consolation tearing through the other flight’s rulers, and her dakti and kethel attacking in a smart, coordinated fashion completely at odds with the way Fell usually fought. By the time Jade ripped open her kethel’s eyes, got knocked sideways from a tail slap by another one, recovered to claw up two rulers, and shredded a half dozen dakti, the attacking flight was in confused retreat.

Malachite shot past and Jade followed her to circle down to land on a hilltop.

As Jade’s claws hit the sparse grass, Malachite dropped two severed ruler’s heads and shook her claws to get the blood off. It was usually important to sever and bury the rulers’ heads, to keep the rest of the flight from being drawn to them. Since the rest of the flight already knew exactly what had happened to their missing rulers, Jade supposed Malachite had only done it to make a point.

As if she needed to, Jade thought. Two of the attacking kethel lay sprawled in the lee of a hill, and the rocky ground was dotted with the corpses of dakti.

The half-Fell circled now, the kethel staying in the air to watch the other flight retreat, while the dakti and rulers started to land back at their camp.

This whole fight should have been impossible. You couldn’t ally with Fell. It was impossible to ally with a being that didn’t see you as anything except prey. But none of the half-Fell flight had even tried to use the confusion to strike at Jade or Malachite.

Jade spotted Consolation circling down toward them. She told Malachite, “We have to get back to the wind-ship.” The Fell had been coming from the wrong direction to have found it, but they couldn’t take any chances.

Malachite flicked blood off her spines and turned away.

Consolation cupped her wings to land down the hill, and called out, “You’re still leaving?”

Malachite paused to look back at her. “We have to return to others who travel with us. We care for each other the way you care for your flight.”

Consolation hesitated, spines signaling confusion, but so erratically it was hard to tell if the gesture was intentional. Then she said, “I’ll keep following you.” It should have sounded like a threat, but it had the air of a stubborn fledgling refusing to obey their teachers.

Jade heard Malachite say, “I’m counting on it,” just before she followed her into the air.

The Court of Indigo Cloud, in the Reaches

The arrival of Celadon, the sister queen of Opal Night, and her two hundred warriors went better than Heart had expected.

Celadon had been greeted formally by Pearl, then taken up to the queens’ hall for tea and to meet Ember. Since Opal Night was already a bloodline ally, Heart and the other chiefs of the Arbora castes had stayed in the greeting hall to help with sorting warriors and supplies.

Indigo Cloud’s colony tree was large enough to take in a much bigger group than this without crowding, and most of the preparations had revolved around cleaning out unused bowers and getting the lights and heating stones ready. The teachers had been sorting the food stores and bringing in everything ready to harvest, with the hunters working hard to bring in more game to preserve. Even though Malachite had said her warriors would be prepared to do their own hunting, they still had to be ready to supply a number of meals. They had also warned the Kek, the people who lived under the roots of the colony tree on the floor of the Reaches, and made every other preparation for Fell attack that anyone could think of. Heart just hoped it would be enough.

Watching with Blossom as the strange warriors streamed in through the greeting hall entrance, Heart felt an odd combination of dismay and relief. Indigo Cloud had never had this many visitors in its entire history, at least as far as their still existing records said, and it was daunting. But if the attack did come the way the visions had suggested, the Fell were going to get an unpleasant surprise.

Vine, who stood nearby, said, “They’re showing off. They’re not really this organized all the time.”

Heart snorted. He was clearly jealous. “Keep telling yourself that,” Blossom told him, unsympathetic.

The Opal Night warriors all seemed to be on the large side, with strong lean muscles and good conformation. Heart could tell they spent a lot of time in the air, a lot of time hauling and carrying, and maybe fighting, too. It was a contrast to the Emerald Twilight warriors Heart had seen, who all seemed very sleek and well-fed and strong, but not this intimidating. And each group that entered was well-behaved, jostling each other good-humoredly. They all stopped to stare up in admiration at the tree’s great well. The enormous space spiraled up through the trunk, with balconies and round doorways leading off into the upper levels. They pointed out the curving stairways and the carved pillars, and the waterfall dropping dramatically down to its pool.

Floret, Aura, and Selene managed the influx, greeting the warriors rapidly and sending the different groups off with an Arbora soldier or teacher to take them to their quarters. The Opal Night warriors caught on to this system immediately, with one from each group going to join the crowd around the three female Indigo Cloud warriors and politely shifting to groundling to wait for their attention, while the others dumped their packs on the floor and settled down to wait. The younger Indigo Cloud warriors who weren’t on patrol or helping Floret were gathered on the balconies, watching and, Heart hoped, learning some decorum. So far none of them had made any trouble, but maybe that was because Blossom kept catching the gaze of her warrior clutchmate Fair and making motions indicating that if he and his friends started anything that she would finish it.

A group of smaller, rounder figures entered next and Heart stared in surprise. “They brought Arbora!”

“That’s a relief.” Blossom craned her neck to see the newcomers. “We can use the help.”

The Arbora seemed pleased to be here, regarding the greeting hall with approval as they shed their packs. One saw Heart and Blossom and came forward, the warriors parting for him respectfully. Heart went to meet him, Vine and Blossom following her. As the stranger reached her, he said, “I’m Auburn, mentor of Opal Night.”

It was even better that Opal Night had brought another mentor. Heart named herself, Blossom, and Vine, and said, “All of you are welcome here.” That was especially true; Arbora of different courts didn’t get a chance to meet much, except on the occasional trading visit.

Auburn thanked her politely, and added, “I wanted to ask after the warrior Chime, who visited at Opal Night with us once.”

Blossom said, “Chime isn’t here. He went with the sister queen’s party to the sel-Selatra.”

Auburn took that in with a worried expression. “I hope they are all well.”

“So do we,” Heart admitted. “The waiting hasn’t been easy.”

Vine leaned in to ask, “How did so many warriors move so fast?”

Auburn turned to him, explaining, “Small groups of warriors travel ahead, carrying some of the hunters and a mentor. They prepare camps, and hunt for game, so food and places to rest are ready when the larger groups come through. We’ve done this before on a small scale, but never with quite so many warriors. The mentors had to consult the old Suspended Forest Travels and Recorded Court Movements. Not a book anyone has much reason to look at nowadays, but very helpful.” He glanced around. “I should get back to the others and help move the supplies.”

Blossom kicked Heart in the ankle and Heart said hurriedly, “I hope you and the other Arbora will join us in the teachers’ hall later.”

Auburn thanked her for the invitation, and returned to the Opal Night Arbora.

Heart turned to Blossom, who spread her hands helplessly. Blossom said, “Don’t look at me, I’ve never heard of a court moving that many warriors, let alone like that.”

Vine asked hopefully, “Do we have that book?”

Heart sighed. It was obviously not only the Indigo Cloud warriors who were going to feel inadequate during this visit. “I’ve never heard of it. We should probably try to trade for a copy.” Much of the court’s library had been lost during the chaos of the long journey from the Reaches so many turns ago. Heart and the other mentors and teachers were still coming to the realization of just how much must have been left behind along the way.

Blossom gave Vine a poke. “Floret’s glaring at you.”

Heart looked. Floret was glaring and would have been flicking spines if she wasn’t in her groundling form. Vine muttered, “All she had to do was ask, I’ve been standing right here,” and went off to join her.

“Aeriat,” Blossom sighed. “Sometimes I wonder what our ancestors were thinking.”

Heart absently agreed to this sentiment, much expressed among older Arbora. “I just hope they’re all settled by the time the other queens get here.” The messengers had been sent just after Malachite had left to follow Jade and the others. With Indigo Cloud and Opal Night both experiencing the dreams and visions, it had been obvious it was time to convince the other courts the danger was real. But the messengers had brought back the news that the mentors of Emerald Twilight, Sunset Water, and some other allies had begun to have similar visions. Arranging the meeting of the queens at Indigo Cloud had been easier than anyone had anticipated.

Now the only problem was Pearl. She had seemed to agree that a meeting of allied queens was a good idea, but Heart knew from experience how quickly Pearl could change her mind. And just because Pearl thought something was a good idea didn’t mean she actually wanted to do it. “How do you think this will go?”

Blossom said slowly, “That depends on what kind of day Pearl is having, doesn’t it? If she’s down, it’ll be a disaster. But you know, she’s been better since the day we got here, and even better than that since Jade had a healthy clutch. So the chances are good.”

Heart hated relying on luck. Flower, the mentor who had taught her, who had been so important in the fight to bring the court here to safety, had tried over and over again to help Pearl. It’s melancholia, Flower had told her, there’s nothing to be done but wait and hope. It was the product of Pearl’s consort Rain’s death, the death of so many clutches, of Pearl’s sister queen, all the others, from the illness and misfortune that had haunted the old colony. Being away from the Fell influence on the old court had helped immeasurably, but Pearl was . . . still Pearl. And Heart didn’t know how much help Celadon was going to be. “I wish Jade was here.”

Blossom leaned against her shoulder in brief comfort. “Me, too,” she said, and went off to help the soldiers show the waiting Arbora to their guest quarters.

South, the Drylands

They had been flying all night, taking advantage of a strong south wind, and Moon was relieved when Stone circled down to the valley. It wasn’t an ideal place to stop and rest, but at least it was there.

The terrain was mostly barren sandy ground with sparse grass, punctuated by low rises and some scrub brush and one lone tree. Moon came in low, tasting the air and catching the scents of dryland flowers and sand.

Stone dropped to the ground not far from the tree. Instead of shifting, he threw himself down and proceeded to make a dust wallow. Moon landed nearby and furled his wings, surveying the valley while Stone cleaned his scales. There was no open water source nearby, not much grazing, and the tree had a forbiddingly spiky canopy, which meant there would be few if any grasseaters and predators, except those traveling through to somewhere else.

Moon got the waterskin out of his pack for a drink, thinking that their next stop would have to be at a water source. Putting the stopper back in, he faced the single spiky tree. Then he went still. At some point, the tree had moved.

The branches above the ball of thorns pointed toward Moon and Stone and the sand wallow now. Something gleamed at the end of each spike. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been there before either, but perhaps the reflective surface had been concealed inside the bud-like structures that surrounded them, like eyelids. Exactly like eyelids. “Stone.”

Rolling in the dust wallow, Stone stopped, looked, and after a moment flicked his spines in dismissal.

Moon backed away from the tree cautiously. They had seen tree-creatures before and Moon always found them a little disconcerting. Their branches were almost like tentacles and he expected them to burst up out of the ground and attack him, even though so far it hadn’t happened. There was always a first time.

There were no bones or other remnants of hunting around the tree, or even in the rest of the valley, and there was no predator musk. Moon was still glad the dust wallow was some distance away.

Finally Stone finished, shook the dust off, and shifted to his groundling form. Moon took his own dust bath, then shifted and managed not to groan out loud. His back was sore, an ache that spread out down his arms and legs, though they had been riding the wind most of the time. If they were on the wrong track, it was all a waste of time, a waste of effort.

“Do you think we’re going the right way?” he asked Stone, mostly just to make conversation.

“I did three days ago,” Stone admitted, stretched out in the sandy wallow.

“Do you think we should have waited for the others?”

“No.”

It was a moot point, anyway. If they were on the wrong path, and the others were on the right one, they wouldn’t be able to find the wind-ship. But Moon missed them, even though he knew Jade would probably want to kill him by now.

Stone said, “Come over here and lie down. Otherwise we’ll never catch anything.”

Moon realized he had been standing there a while, absently scratching the back of his neck and staring at nothing. He sighed and went over to lie down in the sand wallow with Stone.

The sand was warm on his abused muscles and he dozed off, listening to the wind in the grass. After a time, Stone elbowed him. “We’ve got something.”

Moon slit his eyes just enough to spot the shape arrowing down at them out of the cloudless blue sky. “Is it one of those birds again? The last one tasted like dead leaves.”

“You’ll eat what I catch and like it.” Then Stone growled in irritation. “It’s a damn flower-head.”

Moon snarled tiredly. “I thought we flew out of their range.”

Stone hissed. “It’s probably lost.”

The creature stooping on them was roughly the size of an Arbora, with a head shaped like a rounded, multi-petaled flower, a little like an aster. It had the brains of an aster, too. As it neared them, Stone twitched out of the wallow and shifted. Moon didn’t bother.

Flapping wildly, the flower-head tried to stop mid-air, managed not to slam into Stone but lost control and hit the ground. It skidded about fifty paces through the sand and grass and landed near Moon. Moon sat up and told it, “Piss off.”

It scrambled back and cowered, which was even more annoying. But you couldn’t eat something that talked, no matter how stupid it was, and there was no point in killing it otherwise. Stone shifted to his groundling form and ambled back to the sand wallow.

The flower-head said, in bad Altanic, “What are you?”

Moon growled, “None of your business.”

It backed away a few steps, and hesitated. Moon hissed, preparing to shift and snarl, but it said, “Do you know which way the big river is?”

Stupid as rocks, Moon thought, and said, “It’s north, that way.” He pointed.

The flower-head turned, ran a few steps flapping, and awkwardly launched itself again. Stone sprawled in the wallow and sighed. “I told you it was lost.”

Moon didn’t dignify that with a response and stretched out in the sand again. This method of hunting while resting sometimes didn’t work, but when it did, it saved a lot of time.

The flower-head had caused enough commotion that it took a while to lure anything else down. Both Moon and Stone were able to get a short nap in before a large bird finally took the bait and dove on them.

It wasn’t a big meal, but it was enough to keep them going until they reached better country. Moon sat on his heels in the grass and tossed the last cracked bone away. Stone had finished eating and was rolling in the dust wallow again, getting ready to leave. Moon stood and stretched and looked across the valley.

A figure walked toward them across the grassy plain. It was coming from upwind, but Moon knew what it was. This is the most crowded empty valley in the Three Worlds, he thought sourly. He said, “Stone.”

Stone turned to look, then hissed out an angry breath.

We knew they were probably following us, Moon thought. Or it was following us. He just hadn’t expected a kethel to be so good at it.

Stone tasted the air, then shifted to his groundling form. His bared fangs weren’t any less intimidating. “It’s just the one. If there were more, I’d scent them.”

“So it spotted us and went down in the hills. I didn’t think their eyesight was that good.” The uneasy sensation of being stalked made Moon’s spines want to twitch. “This thing is smart.” It was hard to believe it wasn’t half-Raksura. But maybe this was what happened when a half-Raksura trained a kethel to hunt.

It stopped a good distance away, far enough to have time to shift if they tried to rush it. It looked much the same as it had in the swampling port, though its pale skin was coated with a layer of dust and sweat. Its braids were frazzled and it was still wearing a loose wrap around its waist. So it hadn’t just done that to blend in better with the groundlings around the port, Moon realized. Or that hadn’t been the only reason. As if they were travelers who encountered each other all the time, it pointed back toward the hills. “There’s water back there. A little stream under a rock.”

Stone stood silently, radiating suppressed fury. Knowing he was going to have to do the talking, Moon asked, “What do you want?”

The kethel scratched under one of its braids. “To help you.”

Moon set his jaw. “Stop saying that. We know it’s not true.”

The kethel appeared to give up on that point, at least for now, and eyed the dust wallow. “What were you doing?”

“It’s none of your business.” You would think the middle of nowhere would be safe from intrusive questions.

Stone hissed and turned to grab his pack. “Stop talking to it.”

“I can help you,” the kethel said. “Find the groundling weapon—”

Stone shouldered the pack and used the motion to whip around and shift to his winged form. But the kethel anticipated it and shifted almost in the same instant. Moon crouched to leap but the kethel bounced backward in a move Moon had only seen Aeriat use, putting distance between it and Stone. It bounced again, snapped its wings out, and flapped toward the hills. It wasn’t wearing a collar, Moon noticed.

Stone snarled in frustration and stirred like he was thinking of giving chase.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Moon yelled at him, “it’s just trying to lead you into a trap.” The rest of the half-Fell flight might be just past those distant hills.

Stone’s spines rippled, but he turned and leapt into the air. Moon crouched and leapt after him, flapping up through the dust storm Stone’s wings caused. He was relieved to see Stone head south, back on the route they thought the Hians had taken.

Hoped the Hians had taken. Moon had the grim thought, At least the kethel thinks we’re going the right direction.

The new dose of poison seemed even worse, and Bramble was only vaguely conscious for a time. When she began to fully wake, miserably sick again, she decided it was time to implement her plan. They had no guarantee that Vendoin would keep her promise, and Bramble felt it would be better strategy to force the issue.

Merit leaned over her. “Bramble?”

She whispered to him, “Pretend I’m sick, like you have to take care of me.”

He frowned blearily and put a hand on her forehead. “You are sick.”

She groaned for effect and pushed his hand away. “Don’t try to put me in a healing sleep, you idiot.” She didn’t think he could do it under the effect of the Fell poison, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

“You said take care—Right, right, I get it,” Merit grumbled, and crawled away to the water container.

It took most of the day, while Merit begged the Hians above their cage for help and Bramble groaned and made gagging noises. Merit’s voice grew increasingly frustrated and weary, and parts of Bramble’s body went numb from lying down so long. By the time Aldoan finally appeared in the late evening, Bramble was ready to groan for real.

Peering down through the mesh covering, Aldoan told Merit, “You are a healer. Why can’t you help her?”

“The Fell poison. It hasn’t worn off yet and it stops me from healing her. And I don’t have anything to make a simple for her.” Merit leaned against the wall, his slump of exhaustion convincing because most of it was real. The Hians had lowered a basket of food a while ago but neither of them had eaten. It was fruit and some bread-like stuff, not very tempting, even if they weren’t both nauseous.

There was a long silence, then Aldoan walked away. Merit slid down to sit on the floor, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “It didn’t work,” he said in Raksuran.

Bramble groaned. She thought they still had a chance, but she didn’t want to wreck it by talking.

After what seemed a long wait, Aldoan returned, and said, “We will take her to our physician.”

Merit, sitting beside Bramble, squeezed her wrist in triumph.

Bramble and Delin came up with a plan, sort of. She asked him, “Do you think we can get Vendoin to let us see Callumkal?”

“It would be a relief to know for certain that he lives.” Delin tapped a pen absently against the deck. “I have asked before, but have had no success.”

“You might have to trade her something.” Bramble was reluctant to suggest this. Mostly because she could think of too many ways it could go horribly wrong. The Fell poison’s scale pattern had finally faded from her skin and she had been able to shift for the first time in what felt like forever. The Hians had to realize this and she was terrified they would decide to give her more poison. But they couldn’t just sit here huddled in Delin’s cage hoping no one hurt them. “I think you need to maybe hint that you might help the Hians with whatever they’re doing, if they’ll let us all go.”

Delin’s golden brow furrowed as he considered it. “What if she agrees? Or pretends to agree, as is more likely?”

“Don’t help her. But if you could get her to tell you what she knows about the artifact . . .” Bramble flicked her fingers. “We’d have her talking, at least. Once she’s talking, she might say more than she means.”

The next time Aldoan came with their food, Delin dropped the hint that he might be more amenable if Vendoin asked. A few hours later, as the long day was stretching into afternoon, Aldoan reappeared and told Delin that Vendoin wanted to talk.

“Bramble will come with me.” Delin stood and tugged a tangle out of his long white hair.

Aldoan hesitated. “Vendoin did not say—”

“It will save you the trouble of guarding us separately.” Delin stepped to the doorway and waited expectantly.

After a moment of indecision, Aldoan gave in, and she led them away down the corridor.

They went forward along the curving corridor toward the steering cabin, trailed by Hians with fire weapons. But this time Aldoan turned into the wide passage that ran below the steering cabin, and led them to a room just off it. Delin stopped in the doorway and Bramble peeked over his shoulder.

It was a workroom, the stem-beams that supported the ceiling arching to give it more height. There were shelves and cabinets built against the moss walls, holding all sorts of ceramic jars, bound stacks of paper, rolls of paper protected by leather or wooden covers, and small devices made out of metal and glass that must be tools of some kind.

Vendoin stood beside a table in the center, where a scatter of papers lay next to a gray rock. The rock, the one Bramble had seen with Vendoin, Bemadin, and Lavinat up in the flying boat’s common room. Bramble tried not to react. Vendoin glanced up and didn’t seem surprised to see Bramble. Vendoin said, “Aldoan said you wished to speak to me. But perhaps you left it too late.”

“Perhaps I did,” Delin said, unperturbed. “It is a fine day; I appreciate the walk about the ship.”

Vendoin’s mouth shaped something that Bramble, back on the sunsailer, would have confidently interpreted as a smile. Now she wasn’t so sure. Vendoin said, “What do you make of this, then?”

Delin stepped into the room and moved to the table. Bramble followed, glancing back to note that Aldoan and the others stayed in the corridor. She stopped a few paces to one side of Delin, and got enough of a glance at the papers to see it was a translation into Kedaic. The other language looked like the glyphs of the foundation builder writing they had seen in the escarpment city. Delin frowned down at it. “Another translation of a builder work? From the city?”

He spoke Altanic, and Vendoin answered in the same language, “No. The inscriptions in the city were all fairly utilitarian, though interesting in their way. The foundation builders enjoining visitors to dock their craft correctly is still a work of poetry to modern Kish. They were useful to Callumkal only because he wished to reconstruct more of the language.”

Delin flicked a grim look at her. “Which you had already reconstructed in Hia Iserae, and simply withheld.”

She made a throwaway gesture, as if it was of no importance. “Have you ever encountered a reference to a forerunner place that indicated some sort of transportation, or transference, took place there? Something to do with the docking of ships, perhaps.”

Delin’s expression was thoughtful. Bramble’s armpit itched and she was sweating under her ragged shirt, but she was afraid to move, to distract Delin. He said, “This is something you need to know in order to use your new weapon?”

Bramble controlled a wince. She wasn’t sure that Delin should have revealed how much they knew, not yet.

Vendoin inclined her head, as if conceding a point, but Bramble thought she had just tensed with surprise. “You knew of it, then. You were after it too?”

On the other hand, it was nice to have confirmation that their suspicions were right.

Delin said, “I learned of it from your own writings, which I took from your bag before we left the sea-mount city. I suspected you of deception, but not that you would attack us with poisons.” He added, “If you let me speak to Callumkal, I will answer your questions about the forerunners.”

“Hmm.” Vendoin clearly wasn’t certain if she believed him. “But surely you wish to know how I learned about the weapon.” She put her hand on the rock. With a rasping sound it moved, expanding, pieces of it fanning out like folded paper. Bramble couldn’t help a twitch; though she knew better, a rock that moved was too much like a disguised predator, and part of her wanted to snatch up Delin and flee out of the room.

Delin eyed Vendoin. “You have arcane powers.”

“No. But there are Hian practioners who can move rock the way Jandera horticulturals can manipulate the sun moss. This fact is not commonly known, but is handy for examining buried foundation builder sites.”

“Not commonly known,” Delin repeated. “You have concealed these abilities from your own Kish allies.”

Vendoin was impatient. “Do you wish to see it or not?”

Delin leaned forward. Bramble stood on her tiptoes to see. The inside of the rock was inscribed with more of the foundation builder writing, etched deep into its surface. Vendoin said, “This was found in the ruins beneath Hia Iserae. There are hundreds of them, containing different writings, most referencing places we can’t identify or species with names we have no record of, filled with words we can’t translate. They are correspondence, messages sent from other foundation builder sites to Hia Iserae.”

Delin looked up at her, eyes narrowed. “The message in this rock spoke of the artifact.” Bramble heard the faint tremor in his voice that he couldn’t control, the thrill of scholarly excitement.

“It described it, and the city where it was hidden. But there was no way to discover where that city was, though there were indications it lay somewhere in the sel-Selatra.” Vendoin touched the rock and it twisted and folded itself closed. “Until we heard of Callumkal’s map. Will you answer my question now?”

Delin said, “Perhaps I and Callumkal together will be able to answer.”

Vendoin sighed. “I can trade you knowledge. The imprisoned creature your Raksuran friends found in the underwater forerunner city; would you like to know what it was, and why it was there?”

Bramble’s eyes went wide, though she managed not to gasp. Delin went still and she could have sworn his scent changed, he was so shocked. And greedy. Vendoin had known exactly what to offer. Then he wet his lips and said, “You cannot know that for certain. There are theories—”

“When I first read your account, I recognized it. There were passages in the Hia Iserae message-stones which could only refer to it.” Vendoin lifted a hand. “It was a weapon as well.”

Delin glanced at Bramble, his brow furrowed. “A weapon? That being?”

It could be true, Bramble thought, turning this new information over. From what Jade, Moon, and Chime had described, the thing had been as deadly to the Fell as it was to Raksura and groundlings.

Vendoin said, “A weapon, bred by one of the enemies the forerunners and foundation builders united against. It was there to be studied, so the forerunners could understand it.” She nodded at Delin’s expression of consternation. “The creature was described in detail, though again there was nothing to tell us its location. But the depiction in your monograph was too exact to be referring to anything else.”

Delin watched her, the conflict in his expression obvious. Bramble caught Delin’s eye and nodded, just slightly. It was worth the risk.

He eyed Vendoin. “After questioning the Raksura about the forerunner city they were able to briefly examine, I could conclude only that the forerunners must have craft that could travel below the water, as well as the means of building beneath it. As we saw demonstrated in the foundation builder city. That is all I know of the forerunners’ method of transportation. I have encountered no writings that mention it in connection with them.” He shrugged. “In short, I have no answer. I know far less of the forerunners than you know of the foundation builders.”

The moment stretched as Vendoin met his gaze, then she looked at the papers again. “Perhaps later you’ll wish you had been of more help to me.”

“Perhaps,” Delin said.

Once Aldoan took them back to their cage-room and locked the door on them again, Delin said, “That went badly.”

Bramble had to agree.

Moon and Stone flew southwest, making brief stops only to rest and hunt, or when they came across anyone who might have seen a Kishan flying boat pass. This country was fairly empty and there weren’t many opportunities, which was for the best, since it usually required them to waste time pretending to be groundlings.

The latest confirmation that they were still going in the right direction came from a party of furred groundlings moving slowly along on the back of a giant armored herdbeast. Their leisurely method of transportation had given them plenty of opportunity to watch the flying boat go by.

There hadn’t been any more sign of the kethel, but Moon had an itch in his back teeth that told him it was out there somewhere, still following them. Whenever they stopped, Stone stared toward the north, growling a little.

The cloudbank Moon had spotted to the south never broke up. And he was certain it was getting bigger, like flying toward a mountain growing in the distance. He had decided it must be a large collection of flying islands. They had passed several and used a couple as spots to sleep a little. All were fairly small, some with broken towers or ruined remnants of walls still visible above the encroaching greenery. There had been a number of different flying island people, of a variety of species. They were all gone now, as far as Moon knew, their flying archipelagos nothing but fragmented remains.

But the next flying island they came across was different. From a distance it looked like a mass of trees with light-colored trunks and light green leaves, as thickly clustered together as grass, with a sweet green scent. Up close, it still looked like that, and flying under it, Moon found there was apparently no island, just the matted tangled roots.

He banked up to see Stone had landed on the edge. Stone shifted to groundling to squeeze through the trunks into the glade’s interior. Moon dipped down again to light on one of the outermost trees and hook his claws in the roots. Large dead trees, and some failed saplings, had their roots still trapped in the matrix. Moon furled his wings and carefully pulled himself up and in.

He slipped between the trunks as birds chattered overhead, stepping over holes in the root mass where he could look straight down to the ground far below. The sweet scent was clean and piercing, like a mountain-tree almost, but sharper.

He found Stone in a small open clearing, drinking from a deep rainwater basin formed where a trunk had fallen. Moon crouched on the edge to scoop up some water. When he was done, he sat back and said, “What kind of flying island is this?”

“A cloud forest.” Stone wiped the water off his face. “I’d heard of them but never seen one before.”

Moon looked around again. The leafy canopies were open enough that the sun fell through, bathing the whole grove in a warm light. There were smaller trees and more saplings here, as if the forest must grow from its center and push outward. It was too bad they hadn’t encountered it later; it would have made a good place to sleep for a while. “Is that what we’re seeing to the south? That big thing that looks like a cloud bank?” If it was one mass, and not a collection of fragments and heavy clouds, it was far larger than any other flying island Moon had ever seen.

Stone shrugged. “I’ve heard stories about a giant flying island you can see from the far south. I didn’t think they were true. It was called the walls, or the cloudwall, or something like that.”

Moon mentally sorted it under “things with no explanation that were interesting to look at and not particularly dangerous.” He stretched his back, taking a deep breath of the cloud forest’s scent. He thought about shifting to groundling, but Stone was probably going to want to leave in a moment and it wouldn’t be worth it. Just then Stone grunted and started to push to his feet.

The birdsong abruptly dropped in volume.

Moon clamped his jaw against a hiss. Stone went still, head cocked to listen. There was no stench of Fell in the light wind, and none in the forest. Stone stepped soundlessly over the rotting trunk, and turned to slide between the two nearest trees. Moon eased to his feet and followed.

The moss and winding roots didn’t creak as they moved toward the edge, but the low nervous rustle of birds and flying lizards made Moon’s spines want to twitch. They reached the outer circle of large trees. The view was nothing but empty blue sky and the rolling, brushy green hills below, and the wind came straight at them from the northwest. Keeping his voice to a low whisper, Stone said, “Probably Fell. We need to split them.” He jerked his head. “You go out the other side.”

Moon twitched his spines in agreement and ducked back through the trees. This was bad, but could still be survivable. The Fell must be angling up toward them from downwind. They would have spotted Moon and Stone sometime after dawn and been waiting for them to stop to rest. It probably meant there weren’t that many, maybe just a small scouting party. They wouldn’t want to fight inside the cloud forest but they wouldn’t be sure exactly where Moon and Stone would come out.

Moon reached the outer fringe of the forest, stepped between the trees, and spotted three dakti riding the wind high above. He flung himself out into the air, extended one wing and twisted as if he had fouled the other one.

The dakti took the bait and dropped on him. At the last instant, Moon snapped his other wing out, caught the wind and used it to slide under the forest. He caught a dangling root and contracted his body, tucking himself up and out of sight.

Two dakti shot past but one tried to follow him under the roots and blundered in right beneath him. Moon fell on it, shredded its right wing, dropped it, then dove on the other two. He caught one as it foolishly tried to come up at him and ripped its chest open. The other fled, flapping madly, and that was when he heard the crashing and growling from the far side of the forest.

Moon snarled, forgot the dakti and flapped up toward the roots. He found an opening in the forest floor and wriggled through, clawed his way past roots and moss. Dodging between the narrow trunks, the roots vibrated under his feet and the trees ahead shook and thrashed as something struggled just at the edge of the forest. Moon swung up into the canopy for a better view. He spotted Stone and snarled in horror.

Stone was in his winged form but something had fallen on him, a huge thing like a sticky web that had trapped his left wing and half his body against the dead trees on the outer edge. A kethel flapped just above him, swiped at Stone as he struggled to free himself.

Moon leapt from tree to tree then jumped down into the understory, dangerously close to the thrashing body. Moon lunged in and ripped at the sticky net with his claws. This close he saw it had been made from a sac, the substance that the kethel could secrete to carry dakti or rulers. It was caught all through the dead trees and there was no way he could shred it fast enough—

Something hit his back and bounced him off the nearest tree. He fell onto the moss and rolled to see three more dakti clawing their way toward him, jaws gaping with laughter. But the trees were too close together for them to come at him at once, and one shouldered the others aside to be the first to leap on him. That was a big mistake.

Moon caught its shoulders, yanked it forward, spread his jaw to its fullest extent and bit its face and muzzle off. He flung the still-twitching body into the second one, who tried to retreat but wedged its body against a tree long enough to get its chest ripped open. The third fled but Moon caught it in the dead trees at the fringe, slammed it down between the roots and snapped its neck. The dead roots cracked and broke under the force of the blow, and Moon realized this was how he could free Stone.

He shoved through the trunks to where Stone’s left foot was trapped in the sac-net, then started to claw and rip at the brittle roots of the two nearest dead trees. Without the root connection to the rest of the forest, the trees started to sway and topple. Stone must have felt the give; he jerked his foot and the trees ripped out and dragged half a dozen others with them.

Stone dropped and twisted, the sac stretching, strands snapping. The kethel caught the edge of the forest with one clawed foot to swipe at Stone’s face. Moon was close enough to see the collar of skulls around its neck, all groundlings, different shapes and sizes, some so recent rotting skin was still attached.

Another dark body loomed over them, blotting out the light.

Moon looked up at another kethel and thought, well, we’re dead now.

Then it slammed down atop the first kethel, yanked it off its perch and dragged it away. Stone twisted out of the sac-net as they fell past him. The two struggling kethel dropped out of sight under the bulk of the forest.

Moon leapt into the air as Stone wheeled away. He flapped until he caught the wind and then looked back over his shoulder. The two kethel fell, locked in combat. The kethel who had helped them had to be the one from the half-Fell flight. It was the same size and wore no collar.

Three smaller figures darted away in the opposite direction, fleeing the battle. It was a ruler and two dakti.

Ahead, Stone growled. Moon turned back and they flew south and away.

It was morning when Bramble and Delin were taken down the corridor and up to the common room.

Through the large glass-shielded windows, Bramble could see the blue morning sky. Vendoin, Bemadin, and Lavinat sat on a bench, while several other Hians stood in attendance. Bramble hadn’t seen or heard anything of Lavinat since that first meeting in this room, and had almost forgotten her. But her presence here again seemed to show that she was important, though what her place was on this boat or in Vendoin’s plans, Bramble had no idea.

A young Hian male knelt by a low table, using a ladle to combine the contents of various jars into a set of three cups, then he stood and carried the tray to Vendoin, kneeling to offer it to her. There was something about it that Bramble found unnerving and alien. She flicked a quick look at Delin, and saw his expression was closed and neutral, almost as enigmatic as Stone at his best.

Vendoin must have seen Bramble staring, because she asked in Altanic, “Your males do not serve your females this way?”

“Not that way,” Bramble said. She wasn’t sure why it made the back of her neck itch, as if the spines she didn’t have in this form wanted to twitch in discomfort. Consorts made tea for their own queens and each other, informally. Except for Moon, who would do it for anybody unless you stopped him, and Stone, who as a line-grandfather did as he wanted. During formal meetings with other courts, Arbora generally tried to make the tea, since it was important to get it exactly right. But this was different somehow. It didn’t help that Vendoin was critically watching her discomfort.

With an edge to his voice, Delin said, “I don’t mean to interrupt your entertainment, but perhaps you could tell us what you want of us.”

Vendoin motioned them forward, indicating a stool near the table. There was only one stool, and Delin glanced at Bramble. She nodded at him to take it and he sat down with a sigh. Bramble stood behind him and realized she had a better view through the windows from this angle and could see that the flying boat was coming to a stop above a settlement.

It lay in a wide valley with a shallow river winding through that sparkled in the morning sunlight. Steep, rounded, forested hills stuck up out of the otherwise flat terrain, placed at random on either side of the bends of the river and sprinkled across the valley. The groundlings had mostly built their dwellings atop or in the sides of the hills, which were carved with pathways and stairs. Bridges joined the hills, and the ground around them was covered with colorful tents, apparently a market or trading area to receive the traffic from the docks along the river and the two elevated stone trade roads that curved in from the surrounding forest.

Before this trip, Bramble had only heard about large groundling settlements from Moon, and it was still exciting to see one, even under these circumstances. Groundlings moved on all the pathways and bridges, and big flat boats were moored at the river docks or moved slowly with the current.

Vendoin said, “You see we have stopped above a trading town, the last for some distance. We’re well past the borders of Kish now.”

That was discouraging. Bramble knew they had traveled a long way, far outside the bounds of any map she had ever seen, but at least she knew groundlings from Kish. She didn’t know if they were still alive or not, but it felt like Kish was the last familiar thing left in her world outside this flying boat.

Delin said, “That would mean something to me if I knew where we were going.”

Vendoin made a gesture, as if accepting that fact. “If only you had some information of use to me, perhaps I could be more forthcoming.”

Impatiently, Bemadin said, “Why play this game? We will have help soon and we no longer need him or the Janderan.”

Vendoin eyed Bemadin without favor. Then Lavinat said, “What Bemadin said is true, we have stopped here to find another scholar to help us.”

Bemadin’s glance at Lavinat seemed wary. Vendoin stiffened, as if Lavinat had insulted her somehow. The first time Bramble had seen them together, it had been obvious they weren’t in accord. It seemed like the division between them had grown worse over the journey; Bramble hoped it was something she and Delin could take advantage of.

Delin’s brow furrowed. “Do I know this scholar?”

Vendoin looked at Lavinat, as if waiting for her to answer, then said, “She is a great scholar of the foundation builders, but has not lived in Kish for some time.”

Delin smiled a little. “Does she know she is to help you or will you steal her as well?”

Bramble thought that if Vendoin had been a Raksura, she would have hissed and rattled. Vendoin started to say, “That is not—”

Someone shouted from down the corridor behind Bramble, a wordless yell of alarm. She whipped around just as the deck rocked under her feet. It’s Jade and Stone and Moon and the others, she thought in fierce joy. They found us!

Then she caught the scent carried in on the air from the corridor and shifted almost before her mind processed what it was. Fell stench. Sick, she blurted out, “Delin, it’s the Fell!”

She had spoken in Raksuran, but Hians in the corridor shouted the warning in their own language. Bemadin leapt up and ran from the room, calling out orders. Vendoin and Lavinat bolted after her, and Aldoan and the other Hian guards followed in a desperate rush. Delin shoved to his feet, knocking his stool aside in his haste. “Bramble—” His eyes were wide.

She stepped to him and caught his wrist. She didn’t want to risk being separated from him. Opposing impulses to hide and to fight warred in her chest. It was an Arbora’s duty to protect others and hide, and an Arbora’s instinct to fight. There was no queen or consort or older Arbora here to resolve that inner conflict.

Then Delin said in Raksuran, “Bramble, should we try to escape? If they have lifting packs aboard—We must find Merit and Callumkal—”

Bramble twitched and was able to think again. Yes, they had to use the confusion to get to the others. “Come on.”

She went out and up the corridor, tugging Delin along. Several cabinets lined the wall and Bramble stopped to fling them all open and Delin hurried to help. But there were no flying packs stored inside. Hissing, Bramble led the way to the nearest stairs. The Jandera had worn the harnesses for the packs all the time on their flying boat, and the packs themselves had been stored away in every cubby Bramble had ever looked into. The Hians didn’t do that, maybe because the skin between their armored patches was irritated by the harnesses. Or maybe they just didn’t care as much about survival as the Jandera did. “We’ll get Merit first. Do you have any idea where Callumkal is?”

“I have not heard him since we moved to this ship,” Delin said, his voice unsteady with exertion. “I think he must be on the far side, away from our room.”

They passed a window and Bramble caught a glimpse of dakti diving away from the flying boat. She felt a stab of despair; they might escape right into the mouths of the Fell.

Bramble plunged down the stairs, Delin hurrying after her. The boat rocked abruptly to the right and Bramble bounced off the wall. Delin hung on to the railing and she staggered, her claws catching on the soft surface of the deck. Multiple thumps shuddered through the deck, and she knew someone was operating the boat’s big fire weapons. Out of the corner of her eye she caught motion in the cross-corridor and hauled Delin back under the stairs.

Aldoan and another Hian trotted past, Aldoan carrying something and holding it out from her body like it was a poisonous fruit.

It was a dull, silver-colored metal cage with a jagged piece of dark crystal suspended inside it.

Bramble hissed under her breath. It was the artifact, the weapon.

Aldoan and the other Hian went through the outer hatch, letting the heavier door bang behind them as they ran out.

Delin gripped Bramble’s arm. He said, “That was it, the artifact— They must mean to use it against the Fell.”

Bramble leapt to the nearest crystal-covered window with a view of the deck.

Over the hills of the city, dark bodies shot through the air. Bramble spotted more dakti and two kethel. Light and sound burst from the top of a hill not far away; a Kishan fire weapon must be mounted atop it somewhere.

Bramble dragged her gaze down toward the Hians on the deck. Vendoin held the artifact now. She spoke to Lavinat, but the glass in the window muffled sound too much for Bramble to make out the words. From their gestures and posture they seemed to be disagreeing about something. Vendoin turned impatiently to Aldoan and handed the artifact back to her. Aldoan turned toward the hatch and Bramble started to duck.

The Fell ruler hit the deck barely three paces away from Aldoan. It slashed through the two armed Hians in the way, bounced forward, snatched Aldoan, and flung itself off the boat.

Delin made a strangled noise of horror. Bramble’s snarl was soundless, vibrating in her chest. It struck her suddenly that no matter how much she hated the Hians for everything they had done, this was not something that should happen. Not to them and not to anyone. It was too late for the armed Hians to fire their weapons, even as a mercy killing. The ruler carried Aldoan toward the outer edge of the city, so fast Bramble was sure only her eyes could track it. And now the Fell have the artifact. She hoped they didn’t know what it was.

She turned away from the doorway and grabbed Delin’s wrist to pull him with her. Nothing had changed, they had to escape now.

She made it two steps down the corridor when the deck suddenly leapt up and struck her in the face.

As Moon and Stone flew, the cloudwall still didn’t seem to change, except with the play of light and shadow. The rolling hills of the forest under them began to grow wider and deeper, like the swells of a sea of trees.

Then Stone abruptly turned, slipped sideways, and dropped down toward the ground. It was so abrupt, Moon’s heart went tight with dismay. Stone had said he was recovered from his injuries, but Stone lied a lot.

Moon followed him down, already mentally scrambling for alternative plans, and dropped down onto the rocky ground beside him as Stone shifted to groundling. “What is it?” Moon demanded. “What’s wrong?”

Instead of answering, Stone climbed the nearest outcrop. A large tree with fringed leaves perched atop it and birds clacked angrily at them from the branches. Stone tasted the air and said, “Fell and death, from upwind.”

Moon furled his wings and bounced up onto the rock beside him. “I can’t scent it yet.”

“It’s coming from the south.” Stone shifted and leapt, his wings brushing the tree branches as he flapped upward. Moon shook the stirred moss out of his frills and leapt after him.

After some hard flying, Moon started to catch the scent too. Stone was right, it was Fell stench, a taint on the clean wind, and growing steadily heavier. But it was accompanied by the growing sweet-sour stink of rot. So much that it almost overpowered the Fell stench. It was odd. In Moon’s experience, the strength of the scents should be reversed. Fell ate most of their kills. The remnants they would have left behind wouldn’t have an odor this strong.

The sky was mostly clear, with some clouds gathered toward the west where a small rainstorm fell. Moon scented wood smoke before the rising trails of it became visible. They were approaching a groundling settlement. Or what was left of one.

Finally he caught sight of it, built atop a series of steep hills overlooking the wide bends of a shallow river. Two different trade roads wound through the forested hills toward it. The roads had been elevated some twenty to thirty paces off the ground, supported by large carved stone blocks, similar to those Moon had been familiar with in the east. It meant this spot had been a major nexus of travel for more turns than anyone could remember.

Stone leading the way, they dropped out of the air while they still had a hill and tall forest for cover. Approaching on foot and in groundling form was a frustratingly slow necessity, though at least when they reached the first raised, stone-paved trade road they were able to run without wading through brush and high grass. The stench of Fell and death-rot was almost choking the air now, and scavenger birds circled overhead.

The road took them over two bends of the river toward the settlement. Tall, evenly rounded hills dotted the river valley, the slopes covered with low buildings, the pathways and staircases winding upward shaded by trees. On the valley floor between the hills it was all tents and light wooden structures. Flags and other symbols, some variants of ones that Moon was familiar with from the east, hung from poles along the road and near the river docks, telling travelers everything they needed to know, from what shelter and food were available to which kinds of goods trading was done here.

The wind brought the faint sound of agitated voices and Moon saw groundlings still moving among the tent pathways and up the stairs on the hills. Most were short, hairless, with a dull green skin tone. There were far too many groundlings still alive for the aftermath of a Fell attack. This doesn’t make sense, Moon thought.

Then Stone stopped, staring at something. Moon caught up and looked down to see a black scaled arm lying in the dust on the ancient paving stones. His first horrified thought was that it was Raksura, but the scales and claws were wrong. “It’s a Fell ruler’s arm,” he said.

Stone’s brow was furrowed. “Right.” He looked up and tasted the air again. “Come on.”

Next it was a join with a leathery dakti wing still attached, then a ruler’s torso, then more dakti limbs, then a kethel’s foot, and more, all rotting in their own congealed blood, surrounded by buzzing insects and the small ground-scavenging lizards. It was impossible to tell what had killed them. Some groundlings had weapons that could cause things to explode, but it was usually accompanied by fire, and Moon couldn’t scent any burned flesh. There was no sign of damage from Kishan-style fire weapons.

“A little more than a day,” Stone said, judging the time the bodies lay on the road by the carrion insects and the smell of rot. “Maybe yesterday morning. Must be the flight that was ahead of us.”

Moon hadn’t seen any remnants that suggested this was the flight controlled by the Fell-born queen. He felt a little relief about that. Seeing dismembered Fell was puzzling but not horrific. He didn’t want to see dismembered Fell-Raksuran crossbreeds, no matter how mad he was at them.

They reached a place where a ramp had been constructed to allow travelers to leave the trade road. As they climbed down, it was clear the exploding Fell phenomenon was not confined to the old road. Groundlings gathered dead Fell pieces and dumped them in piles in the city’s outskirts, clearly making ready to burn them. Many of the groundlings stumbled with exhaustion, and others carried jugs of water for the workers. Everyone was busy and no one paid attention to the two astonished travelers. Moon said, “What did . . . How did . . .” That was all he could manage.

Stone shook his head, and started away from the burial piles toward the nearest tents.

Moon followed, noting signs that a battle had taken place. Some tents closer in had collapsed, and one had caught fire, its canvas and poles now a smoking heap. Everywhere there was disarray, broken pottery, smashed carts, confused herdbeasts wandering the streets, groundlings who were injured or in obvious distress. There was also some damage to the structures on the hills. The greenery and trees made it hard to see, but Moon spotted a collapsed terrace on the nearest, and on another bricks and roof tiles had spilled down, blocking a stairway.

But most of the groundlings are alive and the Fell are dead, Moon thought. There were Kishan fire weapon emplacements on the hills, but the Fell hadn’t been burned. That was the part that didn’t make sense.

Stone wound his way through the tents with his usual lack of concern in strange groundling places, heading for an open plaza. More groundlings gathered there, some of the stocky green-skinned ones and some who were skinny and light blue-gray and looked as if they were wearing their skeletons on the outside. They were clearly distressed, talking to each other in a high-pitched language Moon didn’t understand, and letting out occasional wails. The cause was obvious: groundling bodies had been laid out on the hard-packed earth of the plaza. The motionless forms had been covered by blankets to protect them from the carrion birds and lizards.

Stone stopped beside a green-skinned groundling, and asked in Kedaic, “What happened?”

The groundling looked up at him. Her head was narrow and almost square, and her eyes large and lidless. She said, “The Fell came here before the last sunset, and attacked, but then they died in the sky. They dropped.” She gestured toward the rows of bodies. “But when we came out of hiding, we found all the Jandera traders dead, with no mark upon them. The Viatl think they’re next.” She wiped at her face, conveying exhaustion and anger. “They panic.”

The Jandera, Moon thought, startled. You thought it didn’t make sense before.

Stone stepped toward the bodies and Moon couldn’t help a hiss of caution. Stone ignored it. He knelt by the first motionless form and pulled the blanket back.

It was a Janderan woman, her dark leathery skin unmarked, eyes open and staring, sunken and clouded with death. The skeletal Viatl and the others all went quiet, watching Stone. Moon eyed them but it was clear they were hoping the stranger had answers.

Stone leaned close to study her, to sniff and examine her mouth and eyes. Then he shook his head and tugged the blanket back over her. Stone pushed to his feet and said, “Tell the Viatl that if it hasn’t happened by now, it probably won’t happen.”

There was a startled murmur from the green-skinned groundlings. “It’s sickness?” one asked.

Stone said, “No, I think it’s something the Fell did.”

Another turned to speak to the Viatl, who greeted the information with confusion. Some wailed in relief, while others seemed understandably unwilling to put much trust in the word of some random person from the trade road.

Stone came back to Moon. In Raksuran, Moon said, “You know what this is?”

“No. But it’s not doing them any good to panic.” Stone looked across the plaza. “We need to find out if the Hians were here.”

He was right; this was a puzzle, and it was too much of a coincidence that it had happened on the route they thought the Hians followed. “Somebody would have noticed their flying boat.”

Stone frowned. “How do you know that?”

Moon sighed. How Stone had traveled all over the east without picking up on these things continually irritated him. He said, “The trading flags. They have two sets, one near the ground, and one on those tall poles. The ones on the poles have to be for flying boats.”

The Court of Indigo Cloud in The Reaches

Frost was hiding in the little chamber adjacent to the queens’ hall, the one consorts were supposed to wait in before they went out to greet visiting royal Aeriat. Her plan worked well, until Ember came down the steps from the upper passage and there was nowhere to go.

He stopped, startled to see her. “Frost, what are you doing here?”

Disgruntled, Frost said, “I’m waiting for the queens.” She realized Ember must also use this room as a quick private route down from his bower in the consorts’ level to Pearl’s. She should have thought of that. He was dressed for the greeting, in a sleeveless dark blue shirt and pants of the best silky cloth Indigo Cloud could produce, with armbands, a heavy gold bracelet, anklets, and gold chains with sunstones braided through his hair.

“Why?” he said, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Frost stirred mutinously. Ember wasn’t First Consort like Moon, but being rude to him would definitely fall under the category of something an immature fledgling would do, and not a daughter queen ready for responsibilities. And he was always nice, and she didn’t want to be rude. But she knew he would tell her to go back to the nurseries. She said, unwillingly, “Jade’s not here and there’s no other sister or daughter queens.”

Ember folded his arms. “You were just going to walk in on a formal meeting of queens making an alliance to defend the Reaches and demand to participate?”

Put in those terms, it did sound bad. “I wasn’t going to jump out at them. I was going to wait until Pearl came out, and then ask her.” She had meant to do it just before the other queens came in, when it was too late to order her to leave without causing a disturbance. Looking up at Ember’s disapproving expression, Frost decided not to explain that part. “Pearl can’t meet them alone. We’ll look bad.”

Ember pointed out, “Celadon is here.”

Frost knew that. It was the flaw in her otherwise carefully thought out reasoning. She said, “She doesn’t live here. She’s Malachite’s daughter queen, not Pearl’s.” Of course, Frost wasn’t, either. The bloodline tie through Moon made Celadon more part of Indigo Cloud than Frost. But Sky Copper and everyone in it was dead, and Frost would be a daughter queen of Indigo Cloud. Frost added, “I live here.”

Ember studied her a moment. “You know it’s a bad idea to surprise Pearl.”

Frost didn’t know that. She didn’t see Pearl much, except when Pearl came to the nurseries to visit the new clutches. “I like surprises,” Frost said.

“Grown-up queens usually don’t,” Ember said.

Frost flicked her spines, glumly resigned. Maybe it hadn’t been a very good idea. Then Ember added, “You should ask her if you can be present. Come on.”

He took her wrist and walked her out into the queens’ hall. The teachers Dream and Bead stood near the hearth, studying the arrangement of the cushions and the tea service with critical eyes. They were too occupied to notice Ember and Frost. Which was good, because Frost’s spines had started to flick nervously and if they saw that they would tell Rill and no one would believe she was grown enough to be a real daughter queen.

Ember led her into Pearl’s bower. Some warriors were there, and so was Gold, the teacher who was best at making jewelry. She was sorting through a pile of polished gems with silver settings, choosing pieces for Pearl to wear. Pearl was curled on a cushion near the hearth. Everyone looked up at Ember and Frost.

The first time Frost had seen Pearl was burned into her brain, when Moon had told them to run and Frost had known the Fell would kill him, when suddenly Pearl and Jade had slammed down out of the sky to rescue them all. But seeing her here, resting in her bower with warriors and Arbora in attendance, Frost remembered being brought to her birthqueen’s bower to listen to the Arbora read stories, and the scents came back to her, of the court and the members of their mingled bloodlines who she would never see again. She couldn’t do anything but stand there and hold on to Ember. He nudged her forward, gently.

Frost gathered herself. “Reigning queen, I—” Her voice came out high and squeaky, and she had to force it lower. “I want to be at the meeting with you. Jade isn’t here. I want to be—Like a daughter queen.” She gave up and stood there miserably. The prepared speech in her head sounded much better; she had no idea how it had come out that way.

Everyone looked at Pearl. Her spines flicked in annoyance, which Frost didn’t think was a good sign. She looked over Frost’s head, at Ember, then down at Frost. Frost’s spines tensed and she braced herself.

Then Pearl said, “Your behavior has not always warranted such favors.”

Frost felt her spines sink. Then Pearl added, “But Blossom has told me how much you’ve improved. If you can keep quiet, and speak only when you’re spoken to, you may stay.”

The sun was setting and the wind carried the scent of the sea when Moon and Stone reached the flying boat.

They took cover in the cliffs above the wide sweep of a bay. Huddled behind a crag of rock, craning his neck to get a view of the shore, Moon said, “At least it’s not another sealed city.”

A metal ruin stretched from the beach at the cliffs’ base out into the shallow water. Tall skinny pylons of different heights supported a series of metal rings, some connected by narrow girders. The metal was dark with age, covered by verdigris, and parts had broken away. Below, stairs led up from the sand to a great stone causeway, a couple of hundred paces wide at least, that extended out into the bay. The pylons that supported it stood in the water or were planted atop rocky outcrops, the waves swirling around them. The causeway was clearly meant to lead to some enormous structure, but nothing was left of it. The end was sheared off and hung out over the empty bay.

Their quarry was suspended in the air above the beach, just to the right of the ruin. The cloudwall loomed on the horizon, wreathed with concealing clouds; there were blue shapes just barely visible that might be mountain peaks, but that was the only discernible detail.

Stone climbed up beside Moon, the gray of his groundling form blending into the rock. He said, “Whatever they’re looking for, it’s got to be up in these cliffs.”

“Maybe,” Moon said. Gaps in the cliff face above the beach held collapsed walls, bridges, terraces, and ruined buildings. But Moon didn’t see any sign that the Hians had sent out exploring parties. “Or underwater, a part of the ruin that fell into the bay.”

Their kethel had landed some distance below them and shifted to its groundling form. It huddled in between the rocks, its gaze going from the Hian boat to Moon and Stone, as if it was wondering what they were going to do. Moon was wondering that himself.

Moon turned and slid down a little, looking out over the shallow valley behind the cliff. There wasn’t much sign of current or ancient habitation among the tall grasses and marshy ponds. The only thing Moon could see that might indicate more ruins were tall mounds of dirt, too rounded to be natural.

Moon doubted the Hians would come out of their boat to explore now, with the shadows lengthening toward evening. His first impulse was to attack at once, before the Hians had a chance to do whatever they had come here to do. But the Kishan fire weapon emplacements and the smaller handheld versions the crew would undoubtedly be armed with were a problem he couldn’t figure any way around.

Below in the valley one of the mounds shuddered and began to drag itself slowly through the tall grass. A flurry of flying creatures, either large insects or lizards, fluttered into the air, apparently coming out of openings in the moving mound. Some settled back atop its surface, others circled above it. Moon nudged Stone. “What’s that?”

Stone turned to look, and shrugged. “I’ve seen smaller ones, back towards the Reaches. The flying things nest inside the big living rock thing. I don’t know if they’re supposed to be in there, or if they’re parasites.”

Moon flicked his spines. Either possibility was creepy, though since Raksura made their colonies inside living mountain-trees, he supposed he couldn’t object. “We can’t wait for the others. We don’t know how far they are behind us, or if they got our messages.”

Stone grimaced. “I know that.” After a moment he added, “Maybe we could talk the kethel into drawing their fire.”

The kethel looked toward them, its big brow furrowed.

Moon didn’t think the kethel was that stupid. And they just couldn’t trust it for a vital role in their plan. “The Hians wouldn’t have to use fire. They’ve got that weapon.” He didn’t want to end up in pieces, like the Fell in the river trading town.

But Stone was right, they did need a distraction. Moon looked at the big insects again, buzzing in a lazy circle above their hosts. Another mound rippled awake, disgorged another burst of insects, then started to move ponderously toward the streams and marshes at the far end of the valley. Others slowly began to follow. The swarm of disturbed insect-lizards was like a huge dark cloud, big enough for at least two Raksura to get lost in, easily. It was too bad it wasn’t on the other side of the cliff, down on the beach. “What do those things eat?” Not the hosts, or the creatures would be devoured by now. “Why are they in this valley?”

Stone’s brow furrowed, and he turned to regard the swarm. “Not grasseaters. There’s none near here. Probably bugs, since they come out at night. Probably have to fly around to all the marshes to get enough.”

Moon considered. “I wonder if they’d want bug paste.” They still had the packet of it from the swampling city.

Stone tilted his head. “There’s a thought.”

For a heartbeat the darkness was burning cold and absolute. Then suddenly dim cloudy starlight shone, the wind moving cool and sweet.

Moon clutched at Callumkal, relieved he hadn’t dropped him in that strange instant of deprived senses. He tilted his wings to slow and control his fall. The sudden darkness was baffling. He still couldn’t see the gleam of waves breaking on the beach, or on the verdigrised metal of the old ruin, or . . . He couldn’t hear the waves, either. That can’t be good, Moon thought, a knot of fear growing in his chest. Something had happened and he wondered if this was what the Fell at the river trading city had felt, right before their bodies had come apart.

But the sky was still there. Faint stars, obscured by far more clouds than there had been when he and Stone had flown to the flying boat. When he looked down, his eyes had adjusted enough to make out a shape below, like the bulb of a giant flower. It was in about the same spot as the edge of the ruin, but it hadn’t been there earlier. Wary, he banked sideways away from it.

Overhead, from the direction of the flying boat, Moon heard someone shout in Kedaic, but the voice cut off abruptly. He registered the difference in the air: there was no scent of the sea, and it was dryer and cooler. As his body adjusted to the abrupt change, something told him they were much higher above the ground now, as high as a snow-covered mountaintop, at least. We moved, we went up, he realized.

That took a little of the terror of the unknown out of the situation. It must be something the ruin had done, maybe not that different from the forerunner tunnel that had given the sunsailer such a violent exit from the foundation builder city.

His throat dry, Moon took a deep taste of the wind and caught the scent of familiar Raksura.

Moon hissed in relief and adjusted his course, heading toward the scent’s origin. Another bulbous shape caught a gleam of light. Something dark moved against it and Moon took the chance and called out, “Stone!”

Bramble’s voice, ragged and frightened, answered, “Here!”

Moon dropped toward her and landed on the curve of the bulb, his claws skittering for purchase on the strange soft material. From here he could just see the outline of Stone’s dark shape. Guessing that Stone was perched on something, Moon hissed, “Look out, I’m coming down.” He jumped, cupping his wings in case the surface was closer or farther than he thought.

He landed on a ledge that felt like smooth rock. He whispered, “Stone, you all right?”

Wings scraped the ground as Stone moved. Delin groaned, and Bramble said, tentatively, “Moon? Where are we?”

“I don’t know.” Moon edged toward her voice and brushed against the tip of Stone’s wing. “I’ve got Callumkal. He’s unconscious.” He carefully put Callumkal down on the paving and patted his face, but there was no reaction. At least Callumkal was still breathing. “Delin, are you all right?”

“It’s my head,” Delin said, thickly, “and my stomach. I’ll be well in a moment.”

Moon felt the displaced air as Stone shifted to groundling. Stone said, “Something’s wrong with Merit.”

Moon hissed in dismay. Above them wispy clouds fragmented and more stars shone, just enough light for Moon to make out the shapes of Delin and the Arbora. Stone crouched in front of Merit, who was folded up into as small a ball as possible, his arms wrapped around his head. Bramble huddled nearby and Delin wavered beside her.

As Stone leaned over Merit, Moon turned to face out into the darkness. With the slightly brighter starlight, he saw they were at the edge of a large ruin.

More flower-like blubs stood at different heights across an open space that formed a deep pool of shadow a few hundred paces wide. He tasted the air again, and caught the scents of rock and dust and fresh water, and the more distant hint of greenery and dirt. It was quiet except for faint high-pitch sounds that he could identify as water insects. This had to be a forerunner ruin. Something had happened to the ruin on the beach, it had made some sort of magic and sent them inland, to another ruin on top of a mountain. He remembered Lavinat had been holding the weapon right before he had leapt off the boat, and hissed under his breath. It must have other uses than just killing. If she caused this . . . It would be typical.

They needed to get to cover; if the flying boat used its remaining distance-lights, it could find them easily.

Bramble crept up beside him. He felt her tremble against his scales and put his arm around her. She huddled into his side and said, “I thought you were all dead. Vendoin said you weren’t, and the way she was so worried about someone coming after her, it didn’t make sense if you were. But I was still so afraid.”

Moon hesitated, but he felt waiting would be worse. “Song is dead, from the poison the Hians gave us. They killed Magrim, and Kellimdar, too.”

Bramble made a noise like all the air had been knocked out of her. Behind him, Delin groaned, and muttered a curse. In a small voice, Bramble said, “Where’s Jade?”

“She’s following us with the warriors, probably on Niran and Diar’s wind-ship.” Moon just hoped they hadn’t been transported beyond the moss’s direction-finding range.

Bramble curled tighter into Moon’s side, and Delin said, “Ah. Niran must be beside himself.”

“You could say that,” Moon admitted. “Diar isn’t thrilled about it either.”

Behind him, he heard Merit say weakly, “I’m all right, it’s just my head. I heard—I thought I heard—I don’t know.”

Moon felt his spines try to lift. Strange voices in your head while you were in a forerunner ruin were never a good thing. Bramble slipped away from his side to go to Merit. Stone said, “We need to find shelter.”

Moon agreed. They had the Hians to worry about, and there might be any number of predators stalking this place. He eased to his feet. “Try to get inside this bulb thing?”

Stone grunted an assent. Bramble said, “I’ll carry Callumkal.”

It was best, as it would leave Stone free to shift. As Stone helped her sling Callumkal over her shoulder, Moon pulled Delin to his feet, then steered him to Merit. “Delin, take care of Merit.”

Delin took Merit’s arm and tucked it into his own. “I have him.”

Moon followed last as Stone led the way to the wall and then along it. He could see the shape of other structures outlined against the sky, curving up from the ruin’s base. Moon wondered if the buildings had sprouted from the floor of the bay somehow, if the whole ruin had lifted up into the sky. No, from the scents they had to be inland.

Ahead, Stone hissed, “Doorway.”

They passed under an overhang that blocked the faint light and Moon sensed it was an open cave-like space. His spines twitched with nerves. He didn’t scent any living things, but in a strange place anything could be possible. Merit said, “Wait, I think the Fell poison’s worn off. I can make a light.” He still sounded weak, but the more you were exposed to the poison, the quicker it seemed to wear off. And Merit and Bramble must have been given a lot of it in a fairly short time.

“Are you sure you should?” Bramble asked Merit, her voice raspy with nerves.

“Well, no, but . . .” Merit sounded a bit more like himself. “We need to see.”

Delin handed Merit something, and after a moment, it began to gently glow. Moon lifted his wings to block the light, in case anyone was watching from the nearby flying boat. The object was a knotted up head scarf, and either the cloth just couldn’t be made to put out much light, or Merit wasn’t able to put much power into it. It revealed a pitted stone wall of dark blue, and the edge of a curved doorway. Stone took the scarf and stepped inside, saying, “Wait here.”

Moon hissed as the light moved away from the door. He caught a glimpse of a polished dark floor, but that was all. It wasn’t a good idea for Stone to go alone, but there wasn’t much choice. After some long tense moments when he could hear Bramble’s claws click and Callumkal’s labored breathing, the light returned. “Come on,” Stone whispered.

Moon urged the others forward. They followed Stone inside and up a structure that might be a curving staircase, or a set of shelves, or just an ornamental arrangement of blocks. Whatever it was, it got them to an elevated platform with a round window, looking out under an overhang that would hopefully hide their light from the flying boat.

Stone stuffed the glowing scarf half under his pack to shield it as Moon helped Bramble lower Callumkal to the floor. Moon turned the waterskin and the last of their food out of his pack, then gave the pack to Bramble to pillow Callumkal’s head. Delin sank down beside him, and said, “How glad I am to see you, my friends, if I did not make that plain before.”

“We’re glad to see you, too,” Moon said. The platform had pillars partially shielding it from the larger portion of the chamber, giving them some feeling of protection. “Here’s food and water.”

“Is Song really dead?” Merit asked suddenly. “I heard you tell Bramble—I thought I heard—”

“It’s true,” Moon said. He was glad it was too dark to read expressions. Bramble reached over to squeeze Merit’s wrist.

Stone said, “Drink some water.”

Merit shook his head. “I feel sick.”

Stone said, “Drink the water anyway,” in a tone that didn’t leave any option for argument.

Bramble wet a corner of a blanket and patted Callumkal’s face. He made a faint breathy noise but didn’t wake. “Were they keeping him drugged?” Moon asked.

“We don’t know.” Delin took a drink from the waterskin and passed it to Merit again. “We were not permitted to see him.”

Disjointedly, Delin and Bramble told the story of their captivity, with Merit putting in the occasional detail. Moon listened, and watched Stone, who sat beside a pillar where he had a good view of the dark bowl of the chamber. No one had said “Where are we?” again yet, which Moon was glad of, since he didn’t have an answer. The more time he had to think about it, the more worried he got.

He hoped that once dawn broke, they would be able to figure out what had happened. South was still where south had been before the ruin had done whatever it had done, so they must have moved back or forward, and not up or down the coast. Pretty far backward or forward, since beside the lack of sea scent, the air movement was coming from the wrong direction.

“Bramble managed to arrange it so she and I were held together, but poor Merit was alone, as was Callumkal,” Delin was saying.

“I’m sorry about that,” Bramble told Merit. “It seemed like the best way to try to escape.”

“No, that was the plan, I understood,” Merit said, absently, his mind clearly on something else. He sounded stronger, as if the effect of whatever had happened was fading. Then he said, “Um.”

Moon knew that tone, the one he hated to hear coming from a mentor. He said, “Merit, what’s wrong?”

Merit hesitated, and said, “Bramble, do you have a headache?”

“Yes,” she said. She added defensively, “It’s been a rough day.”

Merit continued, “And you feel sick in your stomach, and maybe a little dizzy.”

“Yes?” Bramble was uncertain now.

Delin said, “That describes my symptoms perfectly.”

“Right.” Merit didn’t seem pleased to have his guess confirmed. “Moon and Stone?”

Moon had a bad feeling about this. “I’m tired, but not sick.” In the faint light, he saw Stone had turned his head to see Merit, the light catching his profile.

Stone said, “I’m fine.”

Merit took a sharp breath. “That’s what I was afraid of. There’s mentor teaching about what happens if an Aeriat has to carry an Arbora high up in the air, much higher than they would normally fly. Like when we went up to the top of the foundation builder city’s escarpment. The air is different up there, thinner. Arbora aren’t made for going up fast the way Aeriat are. Basically it says an Arbora should be carried up slowly to that height, to give them time to get used to it.”

“You didn’t mention that at the time,” Moon had to say.

“I didn’t want to slow us down, and it didn’t bother me much. The wind was so bad we didn’t go up very fast, anyway,” Merit said. “Everyone felt bad afterward.”

Stone said, “Merit, get to the point.”

“Bramble and Delin and I have the symptoms of going up too fast. I think that’s what happened. I think we went up very high, very fast. Higher than the foundation builder city or the top of a sea-mount.” Merit lifted his hands, baffled. “And it’s cool, but the air isn’t thin up here, like it should be on top of a mountain.”

“Up where?” Bramble asked. “I mean, what are we sitting on? Is the ruin floating?”

There was nothing above us, Moon thought. Except the cloudwall. Uh oh. “It couldn’t be the cloudwall,” he said. “Could it?”

Delin buried his head in his hands and groaned. “The Cloudwalls, or the World Walls, as they are called sometimes, are seen in the southern regions and said to be seen in the far west, and thought to be a trick of the eye, caused by the light and weather. That is what I’ve always heard. There are stories of flying boats that try to approach a cloudwall and it seems to recede before them.”

“I bet we’re on the cloudwall.” Stone sighed. He rubbed his eyes and looked out across the dark chamber.

“What’s the cloudwall?” Bramble asked, bewildered.

Moon realized she must not have been allowed any kind of view outside the Hians’ flying boat. “It’s like a giant flying island, or bunch of flying islands, it’s hard to tell. It’s so high up, we thought we were looking at a cloud bank at first. When we got closer, we could see it was solid but we couldn’t tell much more about it.” He added, “Before I jumped off the boat with Callumkal, I saw Lavinat with the weapon.”

Stone snarled. Merit said, “But why would the weapon take us up here? Unless it’s not a weapon after all and Vendoin’s been wrong all this time.”

“No, it’s a weapon,” Bramble said. “Delin and I were there when Aldoan used it on the Fell and died. It almost killed me.” She twitched uncomfortably. “Vendoin knew she needed to take the weapon somewhere else, to where the rest of it was, and I bet she thought the ruin on the beach was the right place. But if it’s going to kill all the Fell and Raksura from here to the eastern end of the Abascene, it needs to be up high. Like casting a net. You get more from a better vantage point.”

They all absorbed that in silence. Shocked, Moon said, “ . . . what?”

Stone repeated, slowly, “Kill all the Fell and Raksura from here to the Abascene?”

“Yes,” Delin said, “that was her plan. That was what she believed this weapon could do. The death of the Fell in the trading city was an accident. She had no intention of using it on a small scale.”

Merit said, “But how does—”

Stone snapped, “Quiet.”

The others froze. Moon tasted the air and sat up into a crouch, braced to move. After a heartbeat, Stone hissed, “That makes this whole shitting day complete.”

“What?” Moon demanded. Then he caught the scent, the trace of Fell stench.

“It’s the kethel.” Stone shoved to his feet and jumped off the platform.

Moon controlled a growl of annoyance. Of course, the kethel hadn’t stayed behind. It had intended to steal the weapon and had probably meant to do it while they were still in the middle of the rescue.

“Kethel?” Bramble whispered. “The Fell are here?”

“A kethel from the flight of the half-Fell queen has been following us,” Moon explained wearily. “We told it to stay back off the beach, but it must have followed us into the ruin.”

There was silence from the other three. Delin lifted his head to stare blankly at Moon. Merit said finally, “You . . . told . . . it?”

“It’s a long story,” Moon said.

Below, they heard Stone’s voice, too low to catch the words, and the kethel’s deeper voice replying. It sounded defensive. Moon rubbed his face. “I didn’t know kethel could talk,” Bramble said. “Oh, it must be part Raksura?”

“No. It was raised by the Fellborn queen.”

“Is Stone going to kill it?” Merit asked hopefully.

“He hasn’t so far,” Moon said. He thought of trying to explain to the others that it would be weird to do it now, unprovoked, when the kethel had been persistently helpful. It sounded even stranger in his head so he decided not to try. “We’re pretty certain the kethel was sent to get the weapon for the Fellborn queen, but it keeps talking to us, and . . . it’s a long story.”

Stone was returning, and they could hear him say, “—stay down here, or I’ll tear your head off.” Stone climbed the steps again, snarling in exasperation.

“Where was it?” Moon asked.

“It said it was on the causeway.” Stone took a seat. He sounded resigned and furious. “It said everything went dark and it was falling through the air, until it could land on one of these pod-things.”

“I need to tell you something,” the kethel said from below.

Merit flinched in alarm and edged closer to Moon. “That’s a kethel?” Bramble whispered, astonished.

“‘Need’ or ‘want’?” Stone asked.

There was a pause while the kethel thought that over. Then it said, “Another flying boat.”

Startled, Moon said, “What?”

“Where?” Stone demanded.

“Another flying boat in the ruin, before the ground went strange.” The kethel added, “Is that need or want?”

Moon had the feeling Stone was inadvertently teaching the kethel how to be sarcastic. That wasn’t going to work out for anybody.

Stone said, “Where in the ruin?”

“The edge,” the kethel repeated. “Back near where I was.”

“What did it look like?” Moon asked.

There was a moment of silence. “A boat that flies,” the kethel said pointedly.

Stone hissed under his breath. Moon gathered his patience for another try. Then the kethel’s head popped up between the pillars suddenly and everyone flinched back. It blinked in the light from the glowing scarf, taking in Merit, Bramble, Delin, and the unconscious Callumkal without any reaction. Merit warily drew back, edging behind Moon. Bramble whispered, “That’s not a kethel. That can’t be. It’s not—”

“It is,” Delin whispered back. “His face. The fangs. They have been shortened, but—”

Merit made a noise in his throat and tucked himself against Delin’s side.

The kethel seemed to ignore them. It said, “I could show you.”

Stone didn’t respond immediately. Moon didn’t like the idea of having to move the Arbora and Delin in the dark, while following a kethel. Even this kethel.

Then Bramble said, “Oh, there’s something I forgot to tell you.”

Still watching the kethel, Stone tilted his head toward her. “What?”

“I put poison in the cistern on the Hians’ flying boat.”

Moon turned to stare at her. “Poison?”

“You managed it?” Delin was startled.

“What poison was it?” Merit asked.

“We’re not sure. Delin figured out the symbols on the waterskins but—”

Moon caught her shoulders and turned her to face him. “When did you do this?”

“It wasn’t long before you got there,” Bramble said. “I don’t know if it’s had time to work. With everything that happened, they probably weren’t thinking much about eating and drinking.” She gasped and looked at Callumkal. “You don’t think—Maybe that’s what made him sick—”

Maybe, but there was no point in worrying about it when there was nothing they could do. Moon said, “No, it’s probably the drugs the Hians gave him.” He looked toward Stone. “They won’t all get it at once, like we did. If everyone who has a drink of water passes out, the others will realize it’s in the cistern.”

“It depends on how long it takes them to realize it.” Stone sounded thoughtful. “Vendoin told you most simples don’t work on Hians, so it might not do much to them.”

Sounding frustrated, Bramble said, “I was in a hurry, and we didn’t know what else to—”

Moon told her, “We’re not criticizing you, Bramble. We’re trying to think what to do next.”

Bramble dropped her head and said miserably, “I had a really hard day.”

Moon squeezed her wrist. “It’s all right.” He still thought the first thing they had to do was find the other flying boat. It could be more Hians, coming to help Vendoin, but he was betting it was Jade and the others. He stood and went to the edge of the platform, crouching to get eyelevel with the kethel. “Will you show me where the other flying boat is?”

Stone shook his head. “No, we can’t risk—”

Moon told him, “I’ll go alone. We have to find out if it’s the wind-ship or not.”

Stone glared at him, lifting his brows. Moon hissed, “I know.” He knew he was going off alone in the dark with a kethel in a strange place that might be on the cloudwall to look for a possibly non-existent flying boat that might actually be full of Hians instead of their friends.

The kethel looked from Moon to Stone and back. It said, “I’ll show you.”

Stone turned to meet its gaze. He said, “If you don’t come back, I’ll come find you.”

Stone kept his voice even, but he managed to convey his message. The kethel recoiled a little, and said reproachfully, “We come back, old consort.”

“Moon . . .” Bramble whispered in protest. Merit’s eyes were huge and Delin’s brow furrowed in worry.

“It’ll be all right,” Moon told them, and leapt down the steps.

The kethel dropped lightly to the floor near him, and went through the door out to the ledge.

Moon followed. His eyes adjusted quickly, and he could see the kethel’s outline against the starlit darkness, the light glinting on its pale skin. “Walk or fly?” he said.

“Walk along here. I came this way.” The kethel sounded just like a groundling, and Moon reminded himself not to treat it like one. It didn’t make sense for it to betray them, at least not until it got a chance to grab the weapon for itself. But just because it didn’t make sense didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen.

As they followed the curve of the pod, the ruin opened up and the starlight illuminated the graceful shape of the flower-pods across the well, where they arced up above the bowl of shadow. Moon still couldn’t catch any glimpse of the Hians’ flying boat. It must be prudently keeping its lights out, hiding from them. Or from whatever else was here. He tasted the air deeply, but at the moment couldn’t scent anything but kethel. He said, “How did you find us?”

The kethel said, “I told old consort I saw you leave the Hian flying boat and fall on the flower thing. We have to go down now.”

Moon stopped abruptly as the kethel shifted. Its huge dark shape blotted out the light for an instant and flight reflex almost made Moon fling himself backward off the walkway. But its body flowed forward as it made the jump to the curve of a lower pod. The kethel climbed down the curve to the walkway. It paused there, then shifted back down to its groundling form.

Moon set his jaw and made the leap, landed on the curve and half-climbed half-skittered down the steep surface. The kethel faced toward the flower opening, trying to peer inside. It made a huffing noise that Moon realized was its version of tasting the air. Fell weren’t the best trackers; feeding on groundlings trapped in their settlements didn’t encourage the development of high level hunting skills. Moon could already tell that if there was anything alive in the darkness under the pod’s overhang, it wasn’t moving. He didn’t feel they were being watched, either. Just to test the kethel, he asked, “Anything there?”

It moved its head back and forth, then turned away from the pod to start down the descending walkway. “Is this the thing in the sky, like the Arbora said?”

So it had been listening to their conversation. “Maybe. Probably.”

It made a little sighing noise. “She won’t like this.”

Moon knew who it meant. As far as the kethel was concerned, there was only one she: Consolation, the Fellborn queen. “What does she want?” He didn’t think it would tell him the truth, but he had discovered that following a kethel through the dark in a strange place was easier if it was talking.

There was a hesitation. “To help you.”

It seemed to feel sticking to that pat answer was safest. The next pod was just below this one and they could jump down to its walkway without the kethel having to shift. Moon tried, “What does she want in return? The weapon?”

“No.” After a moment the kethel answered, “She wants help.”

Moon suppressed an annoyed hiss. “She wants someone to tell her how a part-Raksura Fell flight is supposed to live when they aren’t Fell anymore. Is she going to keep the flight moving? If you aren’t looking for groundling settlements to eat anymore, why move?” He said again, “What does she want?”

The kethel snarled, “She wants a place for us to live.” It bit the words off, snorted out a breath, and then said nothing.

It didn’t mean to say that, Moon thought. It sounded depressingly true. If the queen was serious about not preying on groundlings anymore, the flight needed to find a place to settle.

Maybe the kethel had been trying to see how sympathetic Moon and Stone were. If the kethel could convince them that Consolation really had sent it to help them, if it could do enough that they felt they owed the flight a debt. Or it’s going to kill us and take the weapon the first chance it gets, Moon thought. He didn’t think there would be a way to tell until it happened.

Bramble was right, it had been a long day. And this had better be their wind-ship with Jade and Malachite aboard. Moon said, “Do you even know how to hunt grasseaters?”

“Yes,” the kethel said stiffly.

They crossed over two more pods and Moon began to have some idea of the size and shape of this structure. Without being able to see it in daylight yet, he thought it was like the ruin at the sea’s edge, but with all the missing pieces in place. If it was, then the causeway should be somewhere below them.

Then Moon caught a hint of sound, a faint creak. Like the creak of a wind-ship’s plant-fiber adjusting itself to the dryer air. He told the kethel, “Stop.”

It paused, turning to watch him. Past the edge of the pod, where a large gap between it and the next cast a deep well of shadow, Moon had the sense of something large. He stood still for a moment, listening deeply, squinting to take advantage of the faint starlight. He extended his wings enough to feel the light breeze. Yes, there was something there, blocking the air flow between the two pods. It might be part of the structure, something sitting at an angle where it wasn’t catching any light, but somehow Moon doubted it. “There’s a boat there, just ahead.”

The kethel turned to study the distance between pods. “It moved in and up.”

“It’s trying to hide from the Hians.” If it’s the right boat, Moon thought. “Go stand downwind.”

The kethel didn’t grumble, just moved around Moon and down the walkway a little. Moon waited for the air to clear, then tasted it deeply. There was Raksura in the faint breeze, the familiar scents of Indigo Cloud and Opal Night, of one annoyed sealing, and the slightly sour scent of the Golden Islanders’ favorite fish paste. He said in relief, “That’s it.” He turned to the kethel. “Stay here.”

“Why?” it asked.

“So my family doesn’t kill you on sight,” Moon said.

There was a moment of thoughtful silence. “Stay here,” the kethel agreed.

Moon moved along the ledge, trying to discern the shape of the wind-ship, and finally made out a deeper shadow against the dark, and the faint gleam of starlight on the glass shield of an unlit lamp. Leaping for the deck would probably be a bad idea; they might have caught scent of the kethel, and had probably heard voices, just too low to recognize. Moon hated to raise his voice when he wasn’t certain how close the Hians’ flying boat was, but there was no better way to do this. He said, in a tone nearer to his normal voice, “Hey, it’s me, Moon.”

There was a faint stir of movement from at least two points on the wind-ship. A rustle of scaled wings and a slap of a bare groundling foot on the deck. After a fraught moment, a voice whispered, “Moon? Is that you?”

Relief made his spines twitch. “Briar, it’s me. I’m going to jump across to the deck.”

There was another flurry of movement and Moon was certain he heard River whisper something and Root reply. He jumped into the air, spread his wings to keep himself aloft, and managed to land on the deck without slamming into a cabin wall.

“Moon?” Chime said from somewhere to his right, then suddenly flung himself into Moon’s arms.

Hugging while in scaled form was always tricky. Moon squeezed Chime’s shoulders reassuringly and turned his face away from Chime’s twitching spines to say, “We’ve got them, all four of them. They’re with Stone.”

Chime demanded, “Are they all right?”

“They’re fine. Callumkal’s sick—”

Kalam’s voice said, “My father is ill?” He sounded caught between relief and renewed fear.

Moon turned toward him. “We think they kept giving him that poison they used on us—”

A faint glow appeared near a doorway: Diar with a lamp that was wrapped in filmy cloth to dim its light. “Our Grandfather is well?”

“He’s fine,” Moon said. “Careful with the lamp. The Hians are here somewhere—”

Then Chime let go of him and stepped away just as Jade grabbed him. Moon shifted to groundling in her arms, and relaxed into her warmth. He had expected to feel relief but he hadn’t expected to feel it so intensely he just wanted to fold up on the deck and collapse. He and Stone had been on their own so long, hoping they were going in the right direction, hoping the others had been able to follow as planned, that nothing had happened to them. Jade hugged him hard enough to take his breath, communicating her own fear and anxiety through the scales to skin contact. He took a sharp breath as she pressed her teeth against his neck. Jade pulled back and said, “Do you know what happened? What this place is?”

“Merit thinks we’re up on the cloudwall, that island formation.” He made himself step back from her. “There’s something else I need to tell you right now.” There were actually a few things, but he didn’t want to blurt them all out in front of the warriors and groundlings.

“What?” Jade said, her voice tight with renewed tension.

“There’s a kethel here. From the Fellborn queen’s flight. It’s been following us.”

Jade let her breath out in a hiss, and he heard sharp exclamations from Diar and Kalam. Somewhere down the deck, River muttered, “Oh, that’s all we need.”

Jade asked, “Do you know where it is?”

Moon said, “It’s over there on the ledge. It walked here with me.” There was a moment of nonplussed silence. Moon added, “It’s a long story.”

From the ledge, the kethel’s voice said, “Old consort said to come back.”

“I know that, be quiet,” Moon told it.

There was another moment of silence. Then Chime whispered, “Is that a ruler speaking through him—”

“No, it’s just him, it,” Moon said. “We need to—”

“Go get the others,” Jade finished. She turned toward Diar. “I’ll take Balm and Briar.”

Diar told her, “If you don’t return soon, we’ll come after you.”

There was a grumble from the ledge. Moon snapped, “What was that?”

“Nothing,” the kethel muttered.

Moon shifted to his scaled form and leapt back to the ledge with Jade. Balm and Briar followed closely behind. Chime followed too, though Moon could practically scent the waves of nervous tension emanating from him. It was because of the kethel, but Moon couldn’t tell Chime that it would be all right.

He had explained about the kethel to Jade, quickly and just inside the cabin doorway. She had grabbed his shoulders like she was suppressing the urge to shake him and growled, “Only you and Stone. You knew the Fell were after you.”

Moon decided not to tell her about the Fell attack in the cloud forest. “Is Malachite here?” He had no sense of her presence, but with her that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She might be standing at his elbow.

Jade hesitated for a bare instant. “She had to take a message to the Reaches. She took some of her warriors with her, but Lithe and Shade and the others stayed with us.” She had tugged him back out on deck. “I’ll explain later.”

It left Moon with the distinct feeling that there was something she needed to tell him that he wasn’t going to want to hear.

The kethel backed away a few wary steps as they landed. Moon said, “We’ll go back now.”

It made a noise of assent and turned to head along the ledge. Jade said, “Wait. There are no rulers anywhere near, telling you what to do?”

“No.” It turned to glance at her, starlight catching a glint of reflection in its eyes. “Just me. She sent me to help the consorts.”

“That was . . . interesting . . . of her.” Jade’s voice was hard.

The kethel hunched its shoulders a little and turned to lead the way along the ledge. Beside Moon, Chime’s spines twitched in nervous dismay.

They were almost to the next flower-pod when the kethel said, “The queens tell you what to do?”

“Yes,” Moon said. The kethel knew that already, so he wasn’t certain where this was going.

“Just tell, nothing else?” the kethel said.

Now Moon understood. The kethel was asking if Raksura were controlled by the queens the way kethel and dakti were controlled by progenitors. It was strange to think that Fell, or at least kethel and dakti, might not know much about Raksura at all.

It was a complex question, with an answer Moon wouldn’t have understood himself a couple of turns ago. Queens could keep other Raksura from shifting, but it was more than that. There was a connection through and between each bloodline, a subtle pull on the heart that kept the court together or could push it apart. Pearl’s pain over her first consort’s death had echoed through all of Indigo Cloud for turns before Moon had arrived there. It had weakened the bonds of the court at a time when it was already vulnerable. Malachite’s determination had held the remnants of Opal Night’s eastern colony together through hardship that should not have been survivable. But that connection didn’t compel obedience.

Jade wasn’t answering and Moon had no idea how to explain it. He said, “Just telling. There is something else, but not like it is for the Fell.”

Chime reached over and squeezed Moon’s wrist.

The kethel didn’t ask any more questions, and soon they reached the point where the pods curved into the central well. Moon lowered his voice. “Careful through here. We think the Hian boat is in there somewhere.”

Moon woke with Niran leaning over him, saying, “We found the Hians.”

He sat up abruptly and bumped his head on the bench built out from the wall. He had fallen asleep on the floor of their cabin, curled between Jade and Chime. From the light falling through the narrow windows, it was nearing dawn. Bramble and Merit were wound together nearby, still asleep. On the other side of the room, Shade was a lump under the blanket and Lithe yawned and rolled over. Root, Flicker, and some Opal Night warriors were in a pile near the door. Jade, already on her feet and shifted to her winged form, asked, “Where’s Stone?”

Niran pointed up. “Sleeping on the roof.”

Chime groaned and sat up. Moon managed to reach out in time to catch his head before it hit the bench. “Thanks,” Chime croaked, and struggled upright.

Moon climbed to his feet, aware his back was stiff and his throat was raw from the dry air. Niran had turned to point. “Their ship is that way, at the far end of this ruin. River and Spark went atop the masts just before dawn, and were able to spot them.”

Jade hissed out a breath. “Let’s go say hello.”

In the Eastern Reaches

Heart waited in the greeting hall, trying not to pace. She was going with Pearl and Malachite to talk to their new half-Fell allies, and she was trying to pretend as if this didn’t frighten her. Though it wasn’t the idea of the half-Fell that was the problem. Malachite had made it clear most of the flight were Fell, subordinate to the half-Fell queen.

The shared dream and visions of Fell attack had been bad enough. Heart took a deep breath to calm herself. This was different.

“Are you all right, mentor?” Celadon asked her. The Opal Night daughter queen waited a few paces away with three of her warriors. Floret had just arrived with Vine and Sage and Malachite’s warriors. Celadon herself would remain behind, since leaving a court without a queen present just wasn’t a good idea, especially under these circumstances.

No one smelled as nervous as Heart, which didn’t help. She said, “I’m fine, thank you. It was just . . . I was held prisoner by the Fell once, when they attacked our court to the east. Moon saved us.”

Celadon’s spines flicked in sympathy. “I haven’t heard that story. Will you tell me when we get back?”

For some reason it was easier to remember that Malachite was Moon’s birthqueen than it was that this sober, capable daughter queen was his clutchmate. Distracted, Heart dipped her spines in assent. “I will.”

Heart sensed movement overheard and looked up in time to see Pearl and Malachite launch themselves off the queens’ hall terrace. Apparently they had solved the question of precedence by simply going at the same time, though Heart somehow doubted if Malachite cared. Heart said, tentatively, “They’re getting along very well.” She wasn’t sure Celadon and the Opal Night contingent understood what a revelation that was for Indigo Cloud.

Celadon lowered her voice. “No one speaks to Malachite like that, especially not another reigning queen. She’s enjoying it.”

The two queens landed on the greeting hall floor before Heart had a chance to take that statement in. Then Pearl said, “Come on, let’s get this travesty started.”

It would be a long flight in cold weather, so they made some quick preparations first. Jade told everyone to eat, so they had some dried fruit and fish paste from the boat’s stores. Moon finished eating before the warriors and went to find his pack where it was stored in the sleeping cabin. He was bringing some food, a knife, a waterskin, flints, and a couple of extra blankets. Rorra was preparing some of the smaller fire weapons for the warriors to carry.

Kalam came in with a small pile of folded cloth. “Moon, please take these with you. For you or the others, or Jade, when she takes her smaller form.”

“Are you sure?” Moon asked, as Kalam sat on the floor beside him. “Don’t you need them?”

Kalam made a negative gesture. “Our clothes are mainly for show. Merit used some pots to make heat in the cabins for the Islanders, and they say they have enough blankets and clothing to stay warm.”

If the Raksura had to spend the night on one of those ice islands, more clothing to wrap up in wouldn’t hurt. Moon took the pile to hand out to the warriors, and asked, “Callumkal?”

“I think he’s better.” Kalam smiled a little wryly. “I know I keep saying that, but he swallowed water on his own and squeezed my hand. Ivar-edel thinks the poisons may be wearing off.”

“That’s good.”

They looked at each other for a moment, then Kalam reached over and squeezed Moon’s arm. “Be careful.”

Moon said, “We’ll try.” There wasn’t anything else to say.

Kalam left and Chime, Briar, and Saffron came in to make their own preparations. Bramble followed Jade, saying, “I know I could help. I know all about the Hians now. And I—”

“No,” Jade said. She took Bramble by the shoulders and said, “We don’t know what we’ll find and I don’t want to risk you. It’s bad enough that we have to bring Merit, but we may need both mentors.”

Bramble sagged in defeat. Then Root slammed into the cabin and demanded, “Why not me? I’m a better flyer than Chime, and I’ve been to more places than them.” He made a gesture toward Briar and Saffron. Briar, pulling on a borrowed Jandera jacket, turned and stared at him, startled. Saffron’s expression was already verging on the homicidal.

Chime was more shocked than offended and Bramble snarled. Moon hissed in reflex, too startled to do anything else. Root knew better than to speak to Jade like that.

Jade looked down at Root, her spines starting to spread and lift. Her voice hard, she said, “You’ve got your own behavior to blame for that. I can’t use a warrior who won’t obey.”

“I should be there.” Root barred his teeth. “I want to—”

Jade’s spines flared and she suddenly had Root pinned against the wall beside the door, her hand curled around his throat. He shifted to groundling, staring up at her, his eyes wide.

Briar and Saffron twitched back a step, Bramble flinched, and Chime made a squeak of alarm. Jade ignored them all, and said evenly, “Root, you need to think very carefully about your behavior, because I will not tolerate this.”

After a long moment, Root dropped his gaze and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Jade released her grip and moved back. “Go be sorry somewhere else.”

Root slipped out of the room. Saffron turned and busied herself with her pack while Chime and Briar stared uncomfortably at each other. Moon controlled a surge of fury; it was every Raksura in the eastern Reaches and beyond they were fighting for, but Root didn’t understand that. Maybe it was too much to get his head around and he was using Song as an excuse not to try. Whatever it was, they didn’t have time for it. He asked Jade, “Are you all right?”

She settled her spines. “It’s fine. We need to go.”

They flew low, not far above the floating ice, from island to island as the gray shapes grew on the horizon. The sea was relatively calm, though Moon felt windblown ice chips catch in his frills.

When they reached a narrow rocky ridge just above the waves, Jade signaled a halt. Moon crouched with the others on the frozen rock, and got a good look at their goal.

They had found the metal ship Merit and the others had seen in their visions, but it wasn’t out here alone. It sat at what had to be the ruin of a forerunner docking structure.

It loomed up out of the sea, the flower-like pods for docking flying boats arranged around a central stalk, like the fluted curving bell of a flower. It was a mountainous structure that dwarfed even the great metal water ship moored at it.

Huge half-moon shaped sails stood on narrow pillars above a wide hull as big as a small city. The stern was high and square and the bow came to a curving point. Above the hull were dozens of towers like big spheres piled atop each other, with darker shapes in their discolored metal that might be doors or windows. Bridges connected the towers with other scaffold-like structures with a less obvious purpose. There was no sign of life or activity, and from the metal debris embedded in the chunks of ice surrounding it, bits had been falling off for some time.

Merit and Briar had landed further down the ridge. Moon saw Merit look toward Jade and signal assent with his spines. This was the place from the vision. It better be the right place, Moon thought. There surely couldn’t be more giant ships on this frozen sea. He hoped.

Chime whispered, “It’s so big. Maybe the mentors were right the first time, and it’s a city. Was a city.”

“Maybe.” Moon didn’t think it mattered what it was, as long as it was the place the Hians were looking for.

Shade crawled up on Moon’s other side to say, “The ship doesn’t look forerunner.”

Chime leaned across Moon to tell him, “I don’t think it is.”

“How can you tell?” Moon asked.

Frowning at the ship, Chime said, “The shapes and the angles and curves aren’t right. Especially when you compare the ship to the docks, or whatever that flower thing is. The curves and shapes on it definitely look like the forerunner ruins we’ve seen.”

Moon asked Shade, “Do you understand that?”

Shade twitched his spines in assent. “Sure. The forerunners built the flower docks, but somebody else built that ship.”

Moon gave up. Chime still had an Arbora’s eye for this sort of thing, and Shade was the only Aeriat who was able to draw, at least as far as Moon had seen. Shade hadn’t gotten the ability from his progenitor mother, so maybe it was a forerunner thing, like the way he had been able to open the doors in the forerunner city.

Balm scrambled up the rocks behind them and said, “Did you see it?”

Moon stared at her. Baffled, Chime pointed at the giant ship. “Uh, yes?”

Balm’s spines flicked in exasperation. “The little flying boat! It’s caught on top of that big flower dock, towards the middle.”

Moon had been too struck by the water ship to see it. Squinting against the wind, he spotted the flying boat tied off to the top of a flower-shaped docking pod near the lip of the central stalk.

The little boat was a gray-green oblong of moss, with a small deck in front, one hatch, and several windows in the upper portion. About twenty paces long or less, it didn’t look able to hold many Hians. Whoever was aboard had presumably used the Kishan flying packs to get down from it to the dock or the ship. The important point was that there was no large fire weapon mounted on it.

Balm continued, “Jade is going to check it out. She said for the rest of us to stay here.” At Moon’s expression, she grimaced, “I know.”

Moon twisted around to look for Jade. She crouched atop a higher boulder at the edge of the ridge, shaking the ice out of her spines. She leapt upward, caught the wind, and flapped up toward the flying boat.

Moon hissed in pure nervous fear. Chime said, softly, “They might not even realize we’re here, so they probably didn’t leave anybody behind in the boat.”

At least Stone was up there somewhere in the clouds on watch. Jade navigated the drafts and rode one above the central stalk, then dropped down atop the flying boat. She crouched there for a tense moment. Shade said, “I think Chime’s right, no one’s inside.”

Jade slipped down to the deck, then disappeared into the hatch. After what felt like one of the longest stretches of time in Moon’s life, she reappeared and signaled for them to follow.

Balm made a hiss of relief and turned to the warriors. “Let’s go.”

Shade hopped down to pick up Lithe, and Moon leapt into the air. He immediately slipped sideways and had to play his wings on the wind to rise toward the top of the dock structure.

The stalk loomed like a mountain, discolored and streaked by uncounted turns of weather and sun. It must be standing on the floor of the sea; the base was mired in an island of ice, washed by the freezing waves. Moon swept past a stained metal sail of the deserted ship and it vibrated with the wind, a low-pitched sound that resonated in his bones.

Moon banked and dropped to light on top of the Kishan flying boat. He furled his wings as Shade and the warriors landed around him. Jade perched on the railing, looking down at the curving edge of the docking stalk about fifty paces below. Moon hopped down to her side. A flat curved walkway ran around the fluted edge, its icy coating broken from the impact of several sets of feet. “They didn’t care that they left a trail,” he said, keeping his voice low. Maybe Vendoin and Lavinat had thought the magic had only worked on the Kishan flying boat. “They don’t know we’re here.”

“We can hope,” Jade muttered. She straightened and waved up at the clouds. Stone’s dark shape appeared immediately and dropped toward them. Kethel followed at a respectful distance. Moon leaned out to try to see down the shaft as Chime came to stand near the rail. Like the flower the dock was meant to resemble, the interior twisted into a spiral, increasingly narrow and dark. There were ledges built into the inside, circling down, but it was an impossible entrance for groundlings. If the Hians hadn’t had their flying packs, there was no way they could have taken this route. And they had gone this way; fresh scrapes scarred the ice on the ledges all the way down.

Stone landed on the curve of the flower pod below the flying boat. The kethel caught the broad stem lower down and curled itself around it.

Jade raised her voice so the warriors could hear. “I’ll go first. I want Stone with Merit behind me. Moon, I want you and Shade last.”

Moon didn’t argue. If the Hians, or something else, was down there waiting to trap them, Jade would be expecting him and Shade to keep the path clear for the warriors to escape.

Jade dropped off the rail. Stone reached out a hand for Merit to climb into, then followed. Balm, Saffron, and Briar dropped after them, then River and Deft. Moon nodded for Chime to go ahead with Lithe, then he and Shade jumped off the rail.

As Moon swept down to the land on the first ledge inside the shaft, he caught a dark shape at the edge of his vision. He almost yelled an alarm, then realized it was Kethel again, dropping to cling to a ledge not far above them. Shade hissed in exasperation. Moon considered telling Kethel to get out of here, but he doubted Kethel would listen. And if something awful was living in the ruin, maybe Kethel would be a deterrent.

Jade had already leapt down the ledges to the spot where the shaft narrowed. There weren’t a lot of perches down there, so Moon waited. He flexed his claws impatiently, noticing the material the structure was made of felt more like stone than metal. There were streaks of dark blue under the coating of ice and grime.

Stone slipped down into the narrowing shaft first, vanishing into the darkness in a way that made Moon distinctly uneasy. Then Jade and Balm. As the other warriors dropped down to follow them, Chime waited with Lithe.

The wall under Moon’s claws shuddered. Below, Chime jolted forward and caught hold of the ledge with one hand. Lithe’s head turned to look up at Moon, her frills catching in Chime’s nervously flicking spines. Below them, Deft and River hesitated, still clinging to the ledge just above the twist where the shaft narrowed. Moon couldn’t see the others, already vanished into the dark opening.

“The whole thing moved,” Shade whispered. He was right, it felt like the whole structure, and whatever it stood on under the water, had jerked a few paces. “You think the Hians—”

The jolt was so hard it knocked Moon off the ledge. He skittered down the wall, his claws screeching on the surface until he caught a rough spot and managed to stop. He was only a pace above Chime and Lithe. Lithe had reached over Chime’s head and hooked her claws on the ledge above.

The wall shook so hard it felt liquid under Moon’s claws. He looked down for the others but River and Deft had disappeared. Shade shouted a warning as the shaft rippled like water, like a wave, and it was coming toward them. Moon yelled, “Go, go, Chime, up!”

It wasn’t coherent but Chime obeyed instantly, scrambling up the shaft toward Shade. Moon climbed after him, sparing another desperate look down. The narrow part of the shaft buckled, the material bent and crumpled, closing off the opening. They got through, Moon told himself in horror. They had time to get through.

He made it up to Shade just as Chime and Lithe took the leap to the flying boat. Kethel had one clawed hand on the railing, holding the boat closer. With Shade, Moon leapt for it and felt the deck roll under him as he landed. He staggered into Shade, who had caught hold of Chime’s arm and kept him and Lithe upright.

That was when Moon realized the sky spun overhead, that the whole huge docking structure below had started to turn. Kethel swung aboard the flying boat and clung to the bow, but the anchor lines gave way with a sound like something’s spine snapping. The deck came up and slammed into Moon; he sunk one set of claws into it and held onto Shade.

The moss boat tumbled, bounced off something, then slammed into something else. Moon shoved himself upright, hooking his claws into Shade’s collar flange to keep them together.

The wind roared in his ears and most of the flying boat was gone. The whole starboard side had sheared off from a few paces in front of them to the stern, only two walls of the upper cabin left. The stem-beams stuck out from the hull, bare and broken, and moss came off in chunks. The boat had hit one of the metal ship’s huge sails. To Moon’s relief, Chime and Lithe had managed to hold on, huddled against Shade’s other side. Kethel’s big dark shape still clung to what was left of the bow.

Everything was moving and Moon’s sense of direction and of up and down was useless. He squeezed his eyes shut briefly, trying to center himself. No, it wasn’t his sense of direction that was confused, it was everything else. The docking structure had started to rotate and was dragging the huge metal ship along with it. Moon’s throat went tight and he thought, did the Hians do this?

The rest of the flying boat could come apart at any instant. They were lucky the moss hadn’t unraveled yet and tangled in their wings.

Moon twisted around and spotted the curve of a wheel, attached to a mast. He tugged on Shade. “This way!”

Shade shoved upright and pulled Chime with him. Chime swayed, dazed, Lithe keeping him on his feet. Shade pulled her against his chest and passed Chime to Moon. Moon pulled him close and Chime instinctively clung to his collar flanges. “I think I hit my head,” Chime muttered woozily. “What happened?”

“Tell you later,” Moon said, as a crack appeared lengthwise down the deck. He leapt to what was left of the railing, then told Shade, “Go!”

Shade said, “Watch the sail,” and dove off the boat. He snapped his wings out to get lift from a gust, then in again to miss the sail and land on top of the wheel just past it. He swung down to brace himself in the wide groove below the rim.

“He’s been practicing,” Chime said, then made an oof noise as Moon leapt into the air.

The wind caused by the motion of the ship and the docking structure made the air into a rapidly changing maze. Moon had to drop sideways twice, tossed like a puffblossom, before he landed on the wheel and swung down next to Shade. He clung there, breathing hard. Looking back, he saw Kethel push off from the flying boat, barrel roll past the sail and drop onto the lower part of the wheel. The shift in weight was enough to push what was left of the flying boat free. It hit the sail and burst into pieces, torn away by the wind. It could have done that earlier and killed us, Moon thought. They were lucky. Sort of lucky.

Voice raised to carry over the rush of air, Shade said, “Did you see what happened to the others?”

Moon moved his spines in a negative. “They were inside. River and Deft went after them.” They had to be alive. He had to think that or he wouldn’t be able to do what he had to do.

“What was it? What did this?” Lithe asked. Then answered her own question. “The weapon?”

“Has to be,” Chime said, and his voice sounded stronger, less woozy. “The Hians must have figured out how to make it work.”

Jade led the way down as the shaft curved into another passage. The twisted pillars made climbing possible despite the motion that pushed her toward the walls. The jostling was deceptively easy to compensate for, but Jade hadn’t forgotten that first jolt. She looked back to Stone not far behind her, and asked, “If it feels like this in here, what’s it like outside?”

His claws hooked into Stone’s collar flange, Merit admitted reluctantly, “Bad. We’re at the center here, and protected. Outside . . . the dock might be tearing itself apart.”

“Moon can take care of the others,” Balm said, as she climbed along below Jade. “And they have a mentor with them.”

“Shade’s tougher than he seems,” Saffron added.

Jade knew she should agree and pretend to be less worried, but she couldn’t make herself say the words. She told herself to focus on finding the Hians. If they didn’t do that, then it wouldn’t matter what happened outside.

Then Stone flicked at her spines with one big claw. She stopped and tasted the air again. She hadn’t been able to scent anything so far, just dry cold air tainted with metal. But now there was a trace of a familiar scent: the Kishan moss.

Jade signaled the others to move more cautiously, and started forward again.

At the next twisted pillar, she found a scraped off chunk of moss. At least they weren’t on the wrong trail.

Further ahead, the shaft narrowed, but the quality of the light was different, more diffuse. “It opens out down there,” Balm said, keeping her voice low.

As they moved into the larger space, Jade motioned for the others to stay back. She crept ahead.

The shaft ended in a large chamber where one pillar twisted around and formed a ladder-like climbing structure all the way down to the floor below. The chamber was more dimly lit, full of shadows, mostly bare except for the embossed wall panels. Jade spotted an open doorway in the wall, with something around it, some ornamental carving . . . And three Hians. Jade hissed in satisfaction.

Two had the smaller hand-carried fire weapons. The groundlings were always overconfident with those. And one was unarmed. Except that one stood with her hands out, eyes closed in concentration. The other two had their gazes locked on the shaft above them, obviously waiting for an attack.

The unarmed one has the magic, Jade thought. That had to be it. That Hian was waiting for the other two to sight the Raksura, and she was going to collapse the shaft again.

Balm, Saffron, and Briar had eased up beside Jade, River and Deft hanging back with Stone. Jade glanced at the three female warriors, gestured toward each of the three Hians in turn, and got spine twitches of assent. Then Jade rocked up on her heels and flung herself out of the shaft with the force of every muscle in her body.

A twist compensated for the rotation of the chamber and she hit the unarmed Hian with her foot claws before the others knew she was there. Jade slammed her to the ground, her claws cutting through the flying pack harness to contract around the Hian’s throat.

Balm hit the next and the Hian’s flying pack went one way and her head the other. The third lifted her weapon to fire at Briar and Saffron crashed into her from the side and slammed her into the wall next to the doorway.

That was when Jade saw the fourth Hian, who stood in the darkened space on the other side of the door. Jade crouched to leap but the Hian didn’t lift her weapon, she reached to the side—

—and the rippled carving around the door began to spiral out and close.

With a snarl, Jade flung herself forward but she hit the closed door and bounced off the surface. Staring at it, she hissed in dismayed fury. The decorative border was made of petals formed of a hard white material, and now that it was closed, it looked like a huge flower. It was a forerunner door.

Beside her, Balm growled. “Is that—”

“Yes.” Jade ran her hands over it, the material soft but impervious under her scales. There was no catch, no place to pry at it.

She felt the change in the air behind her as Stone shifted to his groundling form. He stepped up beside her and tried to work his hand between the petals in the center. He shook his head. “It’s not there,” he said, his voice grim.

“It’s meant to open only for forerunners,” Merit was telling the warriors. “The one we found before had a place where you could trigger the catch, Lithe and Chime figured out how to open it, but this one doesn’t seem to have that.”

“How did the stupid Hians open it—” River began, then answered his own question. “The weapon. It let them in because of the weapon.”

Jade snarled again and slammed her fist against the impervious petals. This was why they had brought Shade, across half the continent, to open any sealed forerunner doors. And now she had no idea where he was, or even if he and Moon were still alive.

The flower door opened at Shade’s touch. Jade flung herself through but no Hians waited beyond. It led only to a corridor winding down in a spiral. It was barely fifteen paces wide, too small for Stone’s shifted form.

Hissing under her breath, Jade went first, with Stone and Rorra and the others behind her. A tight sensation grew in her chest, the feeling that the delay had been too long, that they had lost their chance.

As she rounded the third turn down, a wooden disk from a fire weapon clattered against the wall barely half a pace from her head. Jade snarled a warning to the others and dove below the stream of fire, then leapt forward into the legs of the Hian with the weapon.

The Hian screamed and went down, the weapon’s fire flowing over the ceiling. Two more Hians stood behind the first, and one tried to run and the other tried to trigger her weapon. Balm, Saffron, and River leapt over Jade and slammed into them. Jade ripped her claws across her Hian’s throat and pushed to her feet.

“They know we’re up here,” Balm said grimly, shaking the blood off her claws.

“Then we have to hurry.” Jade flung herself around the next turn. The corridor opened into an empty round chamber with an opening in the floor. Painful doubt made Jade freeze for an instant. There were no doors. But the Hians had come this way . . . Or at least, had thought this chamber worth guarding.

She motioned the others to wait, then stepped to the opening.

It was a short vertical shaft. A climbing bar spiraled around it, but the bottom rungs had been broken or melted away. She couldn’t see into the chamber it led to, because it was blocked by a dark flat shape, suspended in the air not far below the end of the shaft . . . Jade leaned closer, squinting to see. It was a stone, like a piece of slate, and red spots of light glittered on it, flowing across it like water. Aside from the red lights, it looked like the thing that Vendoin had described to Rorra and the others. She drew back. “That has to be it.”

Spark stepped forward to look, and her spines signaled agreement.

Jade pushed away from the edge and turned to the others. “We need to—” She caught sight of Merit’s face and froze. Merit’s expression was like someone had gutted him. He met her gaze and looked away, but his flattened spines didn’t even twitch.

He’s had a vision, Jade thought. A bad one.

Stone saw her and turned to Merit, but Rorra handed him her fire weapon. “Hold this, please.”

As Rorra pulled the flying pack off her shoulders, Jade forced her spines down and tried to make her expression neutral. We’re not dead yet, she told herself.

Rorra was saying, “I used most of that canister getting through the blocked shaft.” She opened the flap at the top of the flying pack and the acrid scent of the moss flooded the room. River winced and Briar sneezed. Rorra pulled out a ceramic container, a tall thin jar with a stopper on both ends.

“Is that more moss?” Shade asked, stepping closer.

“Yes, this tool and the pack work off the same sort of canister.” Rorra handed him the flying pack, took the fire weapon back from Stone, and began to fit the canister into place.

Jade waved her forward. “If you can lean over the edge, I can hold onto you.”

Rorra stepped forward to peer down the shaft. “I want the best angle I can get. Can you hold me out over it?”

Jade wrapped her arm around Rorra’s waist and crouched. She leaned down and caught the top bar, and dangled Rorra directly over the shaft. The others gathered around.

Then below, someone shouted in Kedaic, “They’re above us!”

Jade hissed, “Now!”

Rorra swung the weapon up and pulled the first trigger. Wooden disks shot out and clattered against the stone surface below. Jade heard thumps as something struck the wall beside them. It was the Hians shooting up at them. But Rorra hit the second trigger and the shaft below disappeared in a wash of fire.

Rorra held the trigger down, fire flowing out of the weapon, her face a grimace of effort. Then the fire slowed and cut off. Rorra gasped, “That’s it!”

Jade hauled her up and dragged them both out of the shaft. Stone caught Rorra’s arm and pulled her away and Jade rolled onto the floor. Balm hissed with alarm and wiped something off Jade’s shoulder. She held her palm out, eyes wide. It was a wooden disk. Jade hissed and looked at Rorra in time to see Stone pluck one off her forehead.

River and Shade leaned over the shaft, trying to angle for a view. Saffron grabbed Shade’s frills and bodily hauled him back, snarling, “Careful!”

River reported tensely, “The slab’s still there. I didn’t see any difference.”

Jade held her breath to keep from snarling with fury. Rorra spat out a curse in Kedaic and reached for her pack again.

From below, a voice shouted in Altanic, “Raksura, we have your consort Moon here. If you stop, we will leave him alive.”

Jade went still, rage and terror constricting her chest. Stone’s furious growl vibrated through the floor. Rorra, jamming a new canister into the stock of the weapon, froze.

“She’s lying,” Balm whispered, aghast. “He’s not down there.”

River looked at Merit and started to speak, then let the question die as he registered the expression of horrified resignation on Merit’s face.

Jade twitched her spines in a negative. Of course the Hian wasn’t lying. For all Moon knew, we were dead in here, she thought in anguish. Of course he would look for another way in, would try to get to the Hians.

Stone grated out the words, “She’s not lying.”

The warriors all stared at Jade. She forced her jaw to unlock and made herself say to Rorra, “Go on. We’ll try again.” We have to, she didn’t say, they’ll kill us all, they’ll kill the Reaches. It was effort enough to get those words out and if she tried to say more her control would shatter.

She saw Balm’s throat work, but Balm didn’t protest. Shade’s spines wilted in despair.

Rorra jerked her head in assent, fixed the canister into the weapon. From below, the Hian said, her voice more urgent, “Your Fell ally is here too. Stop and we will spare them both.”

Stone hissed and pressed his hand over his eyes. Jade didn’t understand. Fell ally . . . Then she snarled under her breath. The Kethel. It was more proof the Hian wasn’t lying. Rorra grimaced in dismay and pushed upright again. She looked at Jade and nodded.

Jade took a sharp breath. The Hians were ready for them so there would be no other chance, no matter how many canisters of moss Rorra had brought with her. Jade caught her around the waist. Rorra lifted the weapon as Jade fell forward and swung them both out over the opening.

The fire from Rorra’s weapon filled the shaft. This time Jade felt a vibration through the climbing bar, a reverberation as though something large had snapped. The fire ceased and Rorra shouted, “That’s it!”

Jade dragged them both back, her burden lifting as Stone pulled Rorra out of her grip.

Then the whole room jolted and Jade hit the opposite wall, Balm on top of her. The floor rippled like a wave moved through it. The structure’s steady downward motion turned into a headlong plunge. Beside her, Balm gasped, “You did it!”

Jade pushed away from the wall. “We need to—” Above her head, with a sound like screaming, the walls started to come apart.

It took time to set the trap, and Heart had spent most of it with various people trying to talk her out of participating. Finally the Arbora finished making their preparations at the site, and now Vine and Sage waited with Heart at the half-Fell camp.

Consolation had sent three dakti to take the message to the progenitor. When all three returned, Heart saw the relief that swept through the flight. The other dakti, the big hulking kethel looming around in the back of the camp, even the rulers had been afraid they wouldn’t come back alive. “They are different,” Heart said quietly to Vine.

Malachite and Pearl had already gone ahead with the others to set the trap. It was late afternoon, well before nightfall, and they were hoping the progenitor would be overconfident. Vine flicked his spines and said, “It’s unnerving.”

Sage added, “Everything about this is unnerving.”

Heart couldn’t disagree.

Consolation spoke to the dakti, then came toward Heart and the warriors. As they pushed to their feet, she said, “It’s done. She will come to the meeting. So we should go. I’ll carry you.”

“I know,” Heart said. She made her spines neutral and her voice hard. It was the only way she was going to get through this. She felt the warriors’ tension behind her. “It was what we decided.”

“But you should be a soft skin,” Consolation added. “It would look better.”

Heart eyed her. “Why would I do that?”

“I might make you.” Consolation scratched the skin under her scales almost diffidently. “It might be better if the progenitor thinks so.”

“Can you make me?” Heart asked, trying not to flex her claws. If Consolation could, it would be like a nightmare repeat of the attack on Indigo Cloud’s old eastern colony.

“I can make the rulers change,” Consolation admitted. “Not the others. But the progenitor won’t know that.”

Heart didn’t want any part of a Fell touching her groundling skin, but it made sense. She shifted, flowing into her groundling form. She had worn work clothes, a plain shirt and pants in a gold brown fabric, the hems stamped with designs in a lighter pigment, and some copper bracelets. The dakti nearby stared at her as if they had never seen anything like her before. Heart bared her teeth at them.

“Most of them haven’t seen Arbora before, not close,” Consolation said. She looked at the dakti and said, “They have seen now and are over their surprise.”

The dakti took the hint and stirred, all looking in different directions. Heart stepped forward and let Consolation lift her up. Vine and Sage followed them, but broke off to wait on the branch of a last mountain-tree as the Fell and Heart flew out of the Reaches.

The place they had chosen was in the wetlands, though still within sight of the rampart of mountain-trees. The apparently empty spot was a low mound surrounded by a scatter of large rocks, the whole covered with a heavy carpet of grasses and flowers. From the shapes and the position of the boulders Heart knew that it was the foundations of a ruin. The stretch of open water nearby had an outline that was too regular, though it was softened by the water plants that clustered thickly along the edges.

One kethel coiled itself on the lower part of the mound behind Heart, and two others retreated a distance to keep watch.

It had been a while since Heart had been outside the Reaches. The sun felt good on her groundling skin, sinking down into her scalp and her bare arms, but the open sky made her feel exposed in a way it hadn’t before.

Consolation talked to, or maybe consulted with, the dakti for a time, then began to pace absently in a circle in the middle of the mound. The dakti spread out over the ruin, some taking up positions behind Heart, as if preventing her from running away. But one sat next to her, its scales scraping on the moss.

It was part of the group that always seemed to stay near the Fell queen. Heart eyed it sideways, and said, “If you touch me, I can make the grass you’re sitting on burn through your scales.” Then I’ll rip your face off, she added mentally.

The dakti held up its hands, claws partially retracted. “No touching.” Its voice was rough and husky, more so than when shifted Aeriat spoke, as if its throat and mouth hadn’t been designed for talking. “You’re a mentor.”

“Yes. What are you?”

It shifted. Heart had seen dakti in groundling form, usually dead ones, and they could be mistaken for Raksura. They were usually covered with dirt and grime and sores, which disguised the paleness of their groundling skin from a distance, and could make them look like an Arbora with a lighter complexion. Their hair was dark and straight like a ruler’s, without any of the variations in color and texture common to Raksuran bloodlines. Their features looked like a carving someone had forgotten to finish, their eyes flat and dark.

But this one had coppery skin and curling light-colored hair, a narrow face and eyes as brown as Blossom’s. It was wearing a scrap of cloth wrapped around its waist, like the kilts Arbora wore for outdoor work, but not well-made, and not decorated. Heart tried to conceal her surprise, though it was hard not to blink. She said, “You’re half-Fell.” It wasn’t what she had been expecting. Lithe’s groundling form looked no different from any other Arbora and her scaled form was a combination of Fell and Raksura. But there had been nothing unusual about the dakti’s scaled form.

It said, “How did you guess?” Heart bared her teeth, fairly sure it would understand the gesture. It dropped its gaze, its brows drawing together. “I meant, what do I look like? Like you, a mentor?”

Now Heart understood. “An Arbora.” She hesitated. “You haven’t seen many Raksura.”

“Not close,” it said. “Our consort, your consort. Your warriors. The blue queen, the gold queen. The big green-black queen.” It shuddered, apparently at the memory of Malachite. “Not the Arbora, unless from a great distance.” It gave her another sideways look. “You.”

The Fell queen had tried to take Moon in the sel-Selatra. Malachite had told them about it, but it hadn’t seemed real until now. A ball of rage built in Heart’s chest, so intense it seemed to be coming from outside her body, from her connection to the court. She ground out the words, “You tried to take our consort.”

The dakti pulled back and stared at her. It said, “It was a mistake. I told her. She knows, now.” It added, “She was afraid that she couldn’t keep us alive without help.”

If Malachite felt a tenth of what Heart felt, Heart couldn’t believe she had left the Fellborn queen alive. She said, “Don’t make mistakes.”

“Raksura are always angry,” the dakti said, and tried a small smile.

“Because Fell exist,” Heart said.

The dakti regarded her a moment, then sighed. “I’m First.”

Heart tried to parse that and couldn’t. “What?”

“My name,” it said. “I’m First. I was first, the first one born.” It tilted its head at her. “It wasn’t easy, until Consolation came.”

Heart drew breath to speak, and the words fled. The vision struck her like a blow to the face.

She came out of it to warm sunlight and a circle of agitated dakti. Consolation knelt in front of her, pointing at First, still crouched worriedly next to Heart. “What did you do? Tell me exactly,” Consolation demanded.

“It wasn’t him,” Heart gasped. “I had—I saw—It was a vision.” She wasn’t certain how much Fell knew about mentor’s sight. None of the half-Fell in this flight appeared to have inherited any mentor abilities. They were falling, all falling, and something tremendous fell with them, and there was burning ice, and fire burning through scales, and nothing could stop it. “Something terrible is about to happen. Merit’s there.” She had a clear sense of him through the vision. “Jade’s there. And Stone, and Moon.”

The dakti stirred in alarm. Consolation’s spines flicked wildly. First said, “And someone else? Who else is there?”

“The warriors are there, others . . .” The brilliant images slipped away. She shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Consolation stared at First, and it stared back, its brow knit in consternation.

Then a dakti landed with a thump on the ground behind Consolation. She flinched around, suddenly on her feet. All the others twitched.

The newly arrived dakti pointed to the east. Consolation turned to the others. “They’re coming,” she hissed. The dakti scrambled into position and First shifted back to its scaled form. Heart almost shifted with it, then remembered not to just in time.

As Consolation moved away, Heart spotted the dark shapes against the blue of the sky, arrowing down toward them. She shuddered and wiped at her face. She was sweating all over her groundling skin, but the chill she felt went bone deep. At least she was going to look convincingly distraught for the progenitor.

Two kethel landed on the outer edge of the ruin. Then a scatter of dakti and rulers. Then a huge dark figure dropped to the ground in front of Consolation.

Terror seized Heart like a predator’s teeth. She froze, her chest too tight to breathe. There was no mistaking the progenitor, though Heart had never seen one before. She was larger even than Malachite, maybe at least a head taller and more broad, the largest progenitor Heart had ever heard of. Her scales were as black as the rulers, but with a softer texture, and she held her leathery wings angled back.

Heart thought, you’re just here to look like a terrified captive, remember that. She shouldn’t have any trouble playing that part. But something built behind her eyes, a confused urge to flee or throw herself at the progenitor’s throat, and she struggled to control herself.

The progenitor didn’t seem to notice anything except the Fell queen, but Heart knew she was aware of every movement. The progenitor didn’t make a gesture, but one of her kethel turned suddenly and plunged into the pool. It sloshed through the stagnant water, searching, then turned and flung itself out. It shook itself, sending torn vines and waterweeds flying. Heart kept her gaze on the ground. Malachite had said the Fell would be alert for that deception. Beside her, First made a restless movement.

The kethel settled into a guard position. The progenitor said in Raksuran, “The little abomination knows where a colony is.” The progenitor’s gaze fell on Heart, pretending to notice her for the first time. “The little abomination has a captive.”

Fell always spoke in the language of their prey, and the progenitor’s attention made Heart’s skin creep.

“Proof I don’t lie,” Consolation said. The kethel behind Heart stirred restlessly. Consolation added, “Don’t come any closer.”

The progenitor’s gaze fixed on Consolation. “Stupid to take an Arbora. They will know you are close.”

“They know you’re close,” Consolation retorted. “You’re all over the fields.”

There was a moment of silence. Heart realized the progenitor was trying to impose herself on Consolation’s mind, the way the rulers could on groundlings and unlucky Raksura. Consolation didn’t look away, but she let out a bored hiss. “Satisfied?”

The progenitor drew back as if repulsed. “Abomination.”

Consolation’s spines moved and she made a noise that might have been a laugh. “That’s what my mother said before I killed her.”

Heart bit the inside of her cheek and thought Careful. They didn’t want the progenitor’s mind to go to traps. Beside Heart, First’s claws sunk into the moss, a gesture of anxiety that Heart fully sympathized with.

The progenitor apparently decided there was no point in more games. “Tell us where the colony is.”

Consolation shook her mane of frills. “You haven’t heard what I want. You agree first.”

“I don’t bargain with an abomination.”

Consolation stared at her, her spines trembling. She turned abruptly. “We’re going.” First reached for Heart’s arm. She twitched away from him in startled reflex.

The progenitor didn’t betray any anger. “You play with us like prey.”

Consolation snarled, “I want what I want. You give it to me or I don’t give you what I have.”

The silence stretched. Two of the progenitor’s rulers moved forward to flank her, the dakti and kethel drawing closer. The kethel behind Heart reared up. She felt it towering over her and quailed convincingly, though she was mostly relieved. The Fell had finally been lured into the right positions.

The progenitor said, “Then bargain.”

Consolation seemed to brace herself. “The tree. When they’re the dead, the tree. And a consort, alive.”

“No.”

Consolation did a convincing imitation of mortal offense. “What, no? Why not?”

“You wish to breed, breed with your rulers.”

Where is she? Heart wondered. What is she waiting for—

That was when she realized one of the rulers was on the ground and Malachite stood beside the progenitor.

First and the other dakti near Heart squeaked in unfeigned terror and the kethel jerked back. The breath caught in Heart’s throat as she stared. I knew she was there, and I forgot. She made us all forget. Heart concentrated, reaching for the memory of the last few moments, the way she did for sudden visions. She realized she had seen Malachite come up from between the rocks that blocked the view of the pool. That Malachite had walked between Consolation’s dakti without alerting them, up to the progenitor’s ruler and slashed his throat.

Consolation flinched and dropped into a crouch. The remaining rulers keened in startled fear and leapt backward. Consolation’s kethel moved closer, within pouncing distance of Malachite but also near to the progenitor’s kethel.

The progenitor snarled, “We know you, Malachite of Opal Night. Have you come to join us?”

Malachite flared her spines with predatory deliberation as she circled to the left, delicately stepping around the choking ruler. “Always the same offers, always the same mistakes.”

The progenitor drew back, gathering herself. “You were foolish to come here alone.”

Malachite stopped. She bared her fangs in amusement. “There is a question you should ask yourself.”

The progenitor braced to leap. “We know the abomination aids you. We expected a trap. Others come and you cannot kill us all.”

Unperturbed, Malachite continued, “The question is: was this mound here yesterday?”

The progenitor went still. She started to turn and Malachite leapt forward.

And the other side of the mound exploded. Dirt rained down as the kethel hidden inside stood up and surged over the progenitor’s kethel. A gold form flashed out as Pearl appeared and a storm of Indigo Cloud and Opal Night warriors followed her into the air. Then the half-Fell leapt on the progenitor’s dakti and kethel and everything collapsed into claws and fangs and growling.

In the hours of darkness, the Arbora had crept out here and transformed this spot, removing the turf, digging the hiding chamber and the shafts to allow in air for the warriors, Pearl, and the single kethel, then replanting the grass and weeds. Malachite must have dug in somewhere too, though Heart wasn’t sure where.

Heart should have stayed out of the battle as Pearl had ordered but she lunged into the center of it, bloodlust whiting out conscious thought. A dakti raced for Malachite and Heart shifted in mid-leap and landed on it. It tore at her chest but her heavier claws ripped through its throat as she rolled. She shoved upright and shook the mutilated body off her.

Pearl’s golden form flashed overhead, the warriors fought the dakti in snarling knots. Kethel battled in the air and a struggling cluster of them bounced off the edge of the pool. Malachite and the progenitor slammed across the hilltop, a fury of scales and claws that rammed through a scatter of dakti. Consolation wrestled with a ruler but Pearl hit them both from above, peeled the ruler away from Consolation and ripped his head off.

Consolation staggered free, then leapt to land on the progenitor’s back. But the progenitor was too big, too strong. She rolled and crushed Consolation under her weight combined with Malachite’s. As the combatants rolled away they left Consolation in the flattened grass, stunned. Heart leapt toward her to guard her from the progenitor’s dakti.

The progenitor broke away from Malachite and they faced each other. Malachite’s scales bore slashes and streaks of blood, hers mingled with the progenitor’s. Malachite bared bloody fangs in a predator’s smile and said, “Finish it.”

The progenitor snarled back, “I intend to.”

Heart crouched, watching wide-eyed.

Malachite said, “I wasn’t talking to you,” just as Pearl leapt atop the progenitor’s head.

Consolation shoved unsteadily to her feet, but a ruler leapt at her. Heart lunged forward to help her but staggered sideways as another dakti slammed into her. Heart swung it around, bit into its throat. A ruler grabbed her from behind and she clawed at its arms, too enraged to feel terror.

Then First and a swarm of half-Fell dakti landed on them. Heart bit into the ruler’s arm, aware of the strange sensation of a half-Fell dakti prying the ruler’s claws out of her frills. The ruler wrenched away, snarling. Heart staggered to her feet and saw Pearl with her foot claws buried deep in the progenitor’s neck and Malachite tearing at her stomach and chest. The progenitor tried to extend her jaw, then Malachite widened her own and bit down into the progenitor’s face.

Then a dakti grabbed Heart’s arm and she nearly shredded it before she recognized it as First. It pointed toward the east. “There! There!”

Heart squinted into the distance. A dozen kethel and a cloud of dakti shot through the sky, coming this way. “Pearl!” she shouted. They had to go, now, the progenitor was dying and . . . The kethel weren’t coming. They were falling. Falling out of the sky.

Vision struck again and Heart saw a cold wave from somewhere out of the southeast, moving over the plain like a wall of ice, destroying everything in its wake. She felt the pressure of it already, in the places in her head that sensed direction, that controlled her mentor’s skills, that allowed her to shift. She shouted, “Pearl, Pearl, we have to go! It’s coming!”

The progenitor flung Malachite away, and staggered back. The other Fell screamed at her and she stared toward the east and the dark shapes dropping out of the sky. The quiet spread like a pool as the others felt it, Fell and half-Fell and Raksura alike, everyone staring into the east. Pearl landed beside Heart and snarled, “What is it?”

“Death.” Heart shook the vision off. “We have to run, it’s almost too late!”

Pearl grabbed Heart and whirled around. “Go! To the trees!”

The nearest warriors were all Indigo Cloud. They snatched up their wounded and dying and bounded away to leap into flight. Floret, Aura, and Sand landed beside Pearl. The Opal Night warriors waited, watching Malachite.

Malachite shoved to her feet but the progenitor snarled and leapt away. She landed further down the mound, then sprung into flight. Rulers, dakti, and kethel curved up to follow her.

The half-Fell were left behind, confused and hesitating. Consolation stumbled to her feet, blood dripping down her side. First keened in fear to see her hurt, but Consolation shouted and leapt upward. First and the rest of the half-Fell flight launched themselves after her.

Malachite took a step forward as if she meant to follow the progenitor. Loud enough to make Heart’s ears ring, Pearl bellowed, “Malachite, tell your warriors to run for the trees if you don’t want them all to die!”

That got through to her. Malachite turned back, flicked her spines, and all the Opal Night warriors were suddenly alight. The jolt when Pearl flung herself into the air after them took Heart’s breath. She managed to wrench her head around to get a look back.

The wave of death crossed the wetlands toward them. In the distance another flight of Fell exploded up into the air, a cloud of frantic black dots, then slowed, and dropped like stones. “Hurry,” Heart hissed, “faster.” She felt Pearl’s wingbeats in her own chest as they shot into the green shadow of the mountain-trees. Their path became erratic as Pearl dodged branches and kept flying. All around them were warriors, the half-Fell dakti and kethel.

Then a wave of pain took Heart’s senses, and she saw—

—red light on a dark slate surface, fire washing against it, cracking, splintering, dissolving, falling—

Heart gasped in a breath. “It’s stopped, it’s stopped,” she managed.

“Are you sure?” Pearl’s voice said in her ear.

It had stopped and there was death behind them, across the plain. “Yes. They did it.” She had a clear image of Jade and Balm, falling back from an opening, and someone else, a strange groundling woman.

Pearl’s body jerked as she adjusted her course, and she called out to the warriors to stop. Floret and Sand and the others echoed her, then the unfamiliar voices of the Opal Night warriors.

Pearl landed and Heart lifted her head to find them crouched on the broad branch of a stunted mountain-tree. The birdsong and hum of insects and other life, silenced by their wild flight, was just starting to return. Pain coursed through Heart’s legs, her arms, her back, but it was fading. Their own warriors had landed on branches above and below, and near Pearl was Consolation and First. The Opal Night warriors and the half-Fell dakti and kethel were scattered through the group.

Pearl rose up a little, and said, “Floret? Is anyone hurt?”

On the next branch Floret pushed upright. She shook out her frills unsteadily, her claws gripping the bark. “Aura, Sand, Spring, Drift, Band, Coil, Fair . . . Who has Serene, I know she was hurt . . .”

“Coil’s dead,” Aura reported, her voice rough with shock.

Pearl hissed and Heart winced. Answering calls came as Rise tumbled down from the branch above and began collecting Opal Night warriors. The dakti chittered above them and a kethel rumbled.

Malachite dropped down onto the branch on the far side of Consolation. Consolation twitched and First flinched right off the branch, falling down to the one below. Pearl said, “What was that?”

“I don’t know.” Malachite’s spines didn’t move.

Pearl snarled, “You do know.”

Consolation looked from Pearl to Malachite and back, spines flicking.

“I have a suspicion,” Malachite admitted. “I need to see.” She jumped straight up to the branch above, then took flight up through the mountain-tree’s canopy.

“I hate you,” Pearl muttered, and followed her.

Heart shut her eyes as they hit the curtains of leaves in the upper canopy, then blinked as they came out into sunlight. Malachite lit on a bare curving limb stump that spiraled up out of the green sea of mountain-tree crowns. Pearl landed on the branch collar just below her. The blue sky curved over them and they had a view of the wetlands.

Malachite stared toward the east and Heart followed her gaze as Consolation belatedly scrambled up below them.

All over the wetlands, the dark shapes of Fell, some single and some in groups, were taking to the air and flying away. They moved slowly, like they were in pain. Like their joints and gut ached like Heart’s did. It wasn’t a coordinated effort, their courses were scattered, some directly east, some northeast, some south along the edge of the Reaches. They were fleeing in confusion.

Heart said, “Some of the Fell are dead. Maybe a lot of them.” The vision still lingered in her thoughts, and she could see bodies strewn in the weed-choked ponds and reed-grass. Her brow furrowed as she turned over a stray image, another body lying in a different field, the dry grass more yellow than green . . .

“But not the progenitor,” Malachite said. “She got away.”

“She’s just one progenitor,” Pearl said. “I’m sure we can find some dead ones for you out in the marshes—”

Malachite turned on her with a hiss. “She was the one who brought the others together. You don’t think she’ll blame us for this? She will regroup, with even more power now that other progenitors are dead. She will do this again.”

Pearl hissed. But below, Consolation said, “She’s right. I don’t want her to be right, but she’s right.”

Heart felt Pearl’s throat move in a soundless snarl. Pearl said flatly, “You want to follow her?”

“Yes.”

“And what if that happens again?” Pearl demanded. “Whatever it was?”

Heart touched the last image of the vision, the details scattering into dust as she tried to gather them. But the sense of finality was still there. “I don’t think it will. I’ll have to consult with the other mentors, but . . . I think it’s over.”

Pearl said, “Heart, keep your visions to yourself for the moment,” but her tone was more disgruntled than angry. She sounded exactly like herself. Shaken to her core by what had just happened, Heart hugged her in relief.

Pearl absently patted Heart’s head. She said to Malachite, “I can’t stop you from going. And I admit it’s exactly the sort of mad exploit you excel at.”

Malachite still stared toward the east. She looked down at Pearl. “I don’t need anyone to tell me to go. But perhaps I need you to tell me when to stop.”

Silence hung in the air, just the wind in the leaves and the distant cry of a cloud-walker. Consolation had climbed up far enough to watch them with more fascination than wariness. Heart suspected progenitors didn’t talk to each other like this. She was a little astonished to hear Pearl spoken to like this.

Pearl hissed out a breath of mingled exasperation and weariness. “Back to the colony first. We have wounded.”

Moon woke struggling to breathe, the stink of smoke overwhelming light and sound, nothing but dry grass and acrid metal and burning flesh. He had the bad feeling the flesh might be him; his skin felt like fire. He heard hushed voices, speaking some variation on Kedaic. Then footsteps, coming closer.

That penetrated the haze enough for him to realize the dirt and the scratch of grass was on his bare skin, that he was lying here in his groundling form, probably surrounded by dead Hians. Lavinat used a fire weapon on me, he remembered. He would have blood on his teeth, his hands. He knew what he had to do, pretend he was a groundling, come up with a story. He got his arms under him and tried to heave himself upright, but pain ran out of his chest like blood and water, and he slid down into burning darkness again.

The next time he woke slowly, drifting back up to an awareness of an unfamiliar place. He knew he had been almost awake before, that several dramatic things had happened while he was semi-conscious. He remembered flashes of intense searing pain between times of cool relief. Someone giving him water, and broth with just enough of a taste of meat to make him alternately sick and ravenous. He remembered trying to flex his hands and realizing his fingers were broken, held immobile by splints.

Now the skin of his chest felt tender and tight, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as he remembered. He heard movement from another room, the sound bouncing off stone walls, and voices, none familiar. He took a deep breath, keeping his eyes closed, and tasted the scent.

Sun-warmed air, incense caught in the folds of fabric, Kishan moss, though not nearby, strange groundling bodies, a trace of sweet oil, water running over stone and metal. And somewhere, the confusion of dust and sour/sweet scents that suggested a groundling city.

No Raksura. There was no scent of Fell, either. Kethel might have survived the fire weapons and the crash into the plain, but it wouldn’t have survived being found by groundlings. It was either dead in the ruin somewhere or escaped.

Now Moon just had to figure out where he was.

He managed to get his gummy eyes open to see a high domed ceiling of gray-white stone, embossed with half circles, all set with chips of glittering blue and green glass. Morning sunlight fell through stone-latticed windows just under the dome. Figured bronze lamps hung from the ceiling, and the walls had more embossed images, repeating square designs. The bed he lay on was a stone platform built against the wall, but it was made comfortable with cushions and drapes in soft fabrics.

Moon started to lever himself up and subsided with a gasp at the stab of pain in his chest. He squinted down at himself and saw a lot of patchy new bronze skin in between bandages and red healing burns; the muscles underneath ached with every movement. All the fingers on his right hand and three on the left had been broken and mostly healed straight. He moved his feet and added several toes to the total. He had a dim memory of digging his way out from under smothering debris, breaking his claws in the process. Nothing was broken or strained in his back; it didn’t hurt except for a dull ache. It meant his wing joins weren’t damaged, which was a relief.

Someone had taken care of him, obviously. Someone not a mentor. There was no scent of the simples that Merit or Lithe would have used, and he could tell he hadn’t been put in a healing sleep.

The door in the far wall was an open arch to another room. The groundlings he could hear were somewhere past it. He shifted to his scaled form.

Tried to shift. Nothing happened.

Moon tightened his throat against a snarl. They know what you are. He knew what being caught felt like. But it wasn’t Fell poison; there was no scale pattern on his skin. He tried again but it was like there was a wall between himself and whatever power he needed to shift, a wall he couldn’t break through. Kishan shamen, he thought. This had to be why the Fell were so wary of them.

He tried to sit up again and his arms trembled with the effort of pushing himself upright. There was no sign of whatever might have been left of his own clothes, or anything else he had been carrying with him.

Footsteps sounded from the other room and a small blue groundling appeared in the doorway. It squeaked with alarm at the sight of Moon awake and bolted out.

Moon waited, his heart pounding, but nothing drastic happened. There were agitated voices at a distance, then soft footsteps in the next room again. After a moment, the steps pattered hurriedly away, and it was quiet.

Moon climbed off the couch and stumbled, then lurched across the floor of polished stone tile toward the doorway. He leaned heavily on the doorframe, shocked at how weak he was.

This was room was larger, with stone-latticed windows taking up most of the far wall. A bench with cushions stood near the doorway, a drape of fine dark blue fabric across it. He picked it up and found it was a piece of clothing, a combination of a wrap skirt and pants. The idea of being trapped in groundling form and naked in front of strange people who were holding him prisoner was unnerving, so he got it on and tied at the waist. Then he headed for the windows.

Halfway there, he stepped in water and staggered sideways. There was a shallow round pool with a mosaiced bottom, apparently just there to decorate the room, since it was barely a fingerwidth deep. That’s a stupid thing to have, Moon thought, reaching the windows. He leaned against the stone lattice, shaking the water off his foot.

The openings were easily wide enough to fit his head through. In his shifted form, he might have to dislocate a shoulder to get the rest of his body out, though it would be hard to force even his folded wings through. But he couldn’t shift, so the point was academic at the moment.

The city spread out below was massive, the buildings made of golden stone, their domed roofs covered with carvings and painted designs, colorful banners hanging from open galleries and balconies. Broad streets wove between them, though most of the foot traffic was on the bridges that criss-crossed between the upper levels. He blinked and realized the large bridge curving away between distant buildings was actually an aqueduct, small boats sailing along it. He could spot the tower of a flying boat dock not far past it.

He had never seen a groundling city this massive in the east. This was what a city looked like that had never been destroyed by Fell or other predators, that had never had to move and leave half itself behind.

Behind him, quiet steps approached. Whoever it was seemed much calmer than the last groundling. He said, “What city is this?” He spoke Kedaic, matching his accent to the way Callumkal and Kalam had spoken it.

There was a moment of startled silence. Then the answer, “This is Kish-Karad, the western principal city and Imperial seat.”

Moon turned, leaning on the windowsill to stay upright.

The groundling who stood there was short and round, with roughly-textured gray skin and a boney head crest like a crown across the skull, dark feathery hair sprouting behind it. The long sleeveless robe was shaped to indicate at least two breasts, so he assumed she was female. Her features were broad, her eyes large and dark, and she had that look that groundlings sometimes got, as if she hadn’t expected him to be able to speak, at least intelligibly. Or just not expected him to speak first. Experience suggested it was mostly the former. Moon said, “Did you find any others like me?”

“Not like you,” she said, obviously still regrouping.

They weren’t dead in the wreckage. Moon didn’t let his relief show, though he broke out in a sweat all over.

She watched him carefully. “You’re a Raksura, correct?”

“You should know, since you’re keeping me from shifting.” If the Kishan had thought he was a Fell, they would never have let him live, much less healed him.

A sideways motion of her head seemed to concede the point. “It’s a precaution. You were badly injured and not aware enough to be reasoned with.” She added, “So what were you doing in a burning ruin that fell unexpectedly from the sky?”

At the city where the sunsailer had come to port, Kalam had told the Kish about the Hians; there had been plenty of time for that information to be carried deep into Kish via flying boat. “I was with Kalam of Kedmar, and Captain Rorra, helping them look for Callumkal, Master Scholar of the Conclave of the Janderan. Callumkal, and Delin-Evranlindel, a scholar from the Golden Isles, and two Raksura were stolen by Hians. They attacked Callumkal’s ship and killed our friends.”

He thought she had registered recognition at both Callumkal’s and Kalam’s names. She said, “Why were you helping Jandera?”

It was an odd question to ask, unless you already knew at least some of what had happened. “Because Callumkal is my friend.”

She hesitated, the feathery hair on her brows lifting and expanding. “He lives, then?”

Moon wondered who had claimed that Callumkal was dead. “When I last saw him. He was sick. The Hians gave him poison.” They seemed to be trading answers, so he added, “How long have I been here?”

She stood silent for what felt like a long moment, considering what Moon had said. “We found you fourteen days ago.”

Moon managed not to twitch. Fourteen days. Long enough for the others to find him, if they were alive? They had to be alive; he couldn’t handle the thought that they weren’t. But were they here or trapped up on the cloudwall? And he knew he had done as much as he could to get this groundling to think of him as a person, getting her to answer his questions, referencing Jandera friends; it was time to ask the hard question. “Am I a prisoner?”

Her brows moved again, in what Moon thought was uncertainty. “You are too injured to leave here, and there are others who have questions. I am Ceilinel, Chief Arcanist of the Imperial Conclave. Will you tell me your name?”

Not the most encouraging answer, or lack of answer. He had been right about her being a shaman, at least. “I’m Moon of Opal Night, consort to Jade, sister queen of the Court of Indigo Cloud.” He had to see if he could get a message to someone. He didn’t know where the others were and he couldn’t ask for a message to be carried to the Reaches, which might be under attack by Fell. He struggled to remember every groundling he knew who might owe him a favor and was still alive. Kalam had sent the survivors of his father’s expedition back to Kedmar to get help, and it would surely be easiest to reach them. “Can I send a message to—” Then the world slid sideways and his vision narrowed to a dark tunnel.

He was suddenly on the floor, doubled over, struggling to breathe.

Ceilinel stepped forward, demanding, “What is it? The burns?”

Moon took a deep breath and the cramp subsided. He managed to sit up. His voice came out as a harsh croak. “It’s been too long since I had food.” From bitter experience, he knew he could go without solid food for some time, but the cramps and spasms would become less sporadic and far more painful.

Ceilinel asked, “What do you eat?”

Moon snorted a bitter laugh at the idea that it might be a trick question. “The same things Kishan eat.”

Ceilinel’s steps moved rapidly away. Moon eased himself into a sitting position and leaned his head back against the cool stone of the wall. Returning footsteps and the scent of cooked meat startled him awake; he had slid into a light doze, still sitting up.

Ceilinel returned with three more groundlings. One carried a low table and the other two had trays of food. Ceilinel gestured to them to put it near Moon, who faked another cramp just to hide his relief. They could have refused him food to get what they wanted, though he had no idea what that was.

One of the groundlings set a cushion beside the table and backed away. Moon slid over to it, his legs shaking, and got his first good look at the food.

The trays held a bowl with clear broth and cut roots and cooked fish pieces, and plates with fried balls of a yellow grain with red specks, little round cakes, puffy square bread things with a sweet paste, and cooked meat pieces in a dark sauce. A lot of it was wrapped in big leaves and sprinkled with little white flowers, and it was scented of a dozen different spices. A cylindrical pot emitted the smoky fragrance of Kishan tea and there was a flask of plain water.

At the moment Moon didn’t care if it was all stuffed with Fell poison. He had been in the outer edges of Kish territory before, and some of this was familiar; the grain had been a staple for the Jandera on the expedition. He drank the tea first, then started on the food. He made himself eat slowly and use his best groundlings-are-watching-youeat manners, so he wouldn’t make himself sick or terrify the Kishan. Except for Ceilinel, they had retreated to the archway, watching with wary curiosity. Two were the same species as Ceilinel, but smaller, and one was the blue one, who had a curly mass of silvery hair on its head and very large, expressive eyes. They seemed to have every expectation that Moon would do something terrible, and it was a relief when Ceilinel gestured them out of the room.

She gave him time to eat half the food, then said, “Would you tell me how you came to be in the wreckage of that ruin, or great machine, whatever it was?”

He still wasn’t certain how much she knew, if she was testing him. But calling it a “great machine” rather than just a strange stone-metal thing that had inexplicably fallen from the sky meant she knew more than she had implied. “The Hians stole an old weapon from the foundation builder city that Callumkal wanted to explore. They wanted to use it to kill Fell, but it also killed Jandera and Raksura. And Hians. They knew that, and didn’t care. They put it in an old forerunner ruin to make it work. We tried to stop them.” He kept the explanation short. Ceilinel might be trying to confirm someone else’s story, or maybe catch Moon in a lie. He wanted to ask about Niran’s wind-ship, but he didn’t want to betray its existence if the Kish didn’t already know about it. “Do Kalam and Rorra, or Delin, know I’m here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But the Jandera who speak for Kedmar in the Imperial councils do.” She watched him for another moment. “I’ve been told consorts never leave Raksuran colonies.”

She had used the correct Kedaic word for colony, not “hive” or anything else Moon had heard. It fed that spark of hope. She had spoken to somebody who knew about Raksura; it didn’t necessarily mean it was Delin or Rorra or Kalam, it could have been some Kishan scholar Moon had never met. He said, “Not often. But consorts travel with their queens as . . .” He wasn’t sure about the multiple meanings of the word he wanted in Kedaic, so settled for Altanic. “ . . . envoys.” The food was already making him feel less weak, making it easier to think. It wasn’t a good idea to lie, since he had no idea how much Ceilinel knew. Which was a problem since Moon was much better at lying than telling the truth. “I was raised outside a colony, so I’ve traveled more than most consorts.” Putting it that way sounded better than saying he had been what a Raksuran court would call a feral solitary for most of his life.

“What makes consorts so . . . in need of protection? Is it because you’re male?”

Moon looked up at her. Two turns ago he wouldn’t have been able to answer this question. “Because we carry the court’s bloodline.”

Ceilinel said nothing, though Moon could feel her watching as he cleared the last plate of little cakes. She said, “Is that enough food?”

He looked up at her. “That depends on how long you’re keeping me.”

“At least until you’re well enough to travel. And food will be provided whenever you wish.” She glanced at the empty plates. “Is there anything else you want now?”

“Do you have books in Altanic?” Moon asked on impulse. It was partly strategic; he had to keep her thinking of him as a person and not a dangerous if wounded animal. But if he was going to be stuck here for a while with no idea what had happened to the others, a distraction would help him keep his sanity.

Her brows moved in a way that made him think she was trying to conceal unflattering surprise. “I’m sure some can be found.” She hesitated. “Anything else?”

“Why is there a pool of water in the middle of the room?”

“To cool the air,” she said, and walked out.

Moon took the opportunity to lick the plates, then tried to stand. He had to haul himself up on the window sill and once upright, he swayed, shaky and sick. He didn’t think they had drugged him. There just weren’t that many drugs that affected Raksura that weren’t Fell poison, and this didn’t feel like it. It was more likely that his battered body had reached its limit for the moment. He barely made it back to the couch in the other room, climbed into it and burrowed down into the blankets, sliding back into sleep.

Moon waited for armed groundlings to show up and drag him away to a more secure cage, or possibly just to chain him up here. But no one came, and eventually he fell asleep.

He slept off and on through the night, waking in the late morning to the scent of more food in the outer room. After he ate, he took the Kish history book and left his cell to explore some more.

He avoided the chambers on the upper level where the faint sounds of movement and voices indicated that Ceilinel and at least two or three other groundlings were present. The wind had changed direction, so he found a lattice window on the opposite side of the tower from the gallery, and attached another piece of bandage to an unobtrusive spot. Moon didn’t know if it was possible to trace a Raksura by scent in a groundling city this size, even with the help of cloth soaked with sweat and piss. But he knew how acute Stone’s senses could be. If Stone was still alive.

He found a sitting room with latticed windows looking out onto the market structure. Beyond it was a canyon formed by domed buildings lining what seemed to be a major street. The room had cushioned benches and couches centered around another shallow floor pool, but Moon carried a cushion over and took a seat in the corner of the wide windowsill.

As the afternoon light deepened across the city, Moon slept off and on, and read the book while keeping an eye on the bridges and walkways. Large numbers of people came and went from the market. He couldn’t see much of the inside, just occasional glimpses of bolts of gleaming fabric or tall urns and large pieces of pottery.

He tried to keep his attention on the book, tried not to think about where the others were or what might be happening in the Reaches. There were no maps in the text, but there was a description of the principal cities of Kish and their relations with each other, which told him where Kish-Karad was well enough to plan a rough route back to the Reaches, if he had to escape on his own. Or if Ceilinel kept her word and released him.

Finally the sunset washed the domes with gold, and lights began to gleam on the streets and bridges. The hanging bronze lamps in the room and the attached hall began to glow. During the day at least three groundlings had come to the door to peer at him and then retreat, probably to report to Ceilinel. The next one who came was Vata, and she said, “Ah, excuse me, but Ceilinel has asked to speak to you.”

Moon sat up and folded the book back into its cover, taking one last glance out at the market. This time his eye was caught by a stillness in the river of movement on the walkway along the lowest level. A lone figure stood in a patch of fading sunlight, a tall shape in the kind of loose robe groundling traders from the southern drylands wore. The scarf wrapped around its head was a gold pattern, very like the one Niran wore to protect his hair on the wind-ship. Most groundlings sitting where Moon was wouldn’t be able to see that much detail at this distance, and the figure standing there shouldn’t be able to see Moon.

Moon set the book on the bench and pushed to his feet, as flushed and weak as when he had woken the first time. Hope was painful. He might be mistaken or hallucinating. He had seen more groundlings of different species stroll along that walkway this afternoon than he had ever seen in one place in his entire life; some of them were bound to be the size of an Aeriat and wear head scarfs like the Golden Islanders. It might actually be an unusually tall Golden Islander.

He took a deep breath, got his expression under control, and pushed away from the window to go to Ceilinel.

Moon spent the day and night mostly sleeping, continuing to recover. This was helped by Vata making sure that food was brought to them every few hours. Even Stone was starting to get full.

In the morning, Vata, still not venturing any nearer than the door to the corridor, told them the boat should be close to the Imperial border, so they went up on deck to wait. The jungle below was deep now, covering low hills cut through with the occasional rocky gorge or silver stream. There was no sign of groundling settlements. As the trees below sloped down into a valley, Stone tasted the air. He said, “Fell, coming from the west.”

Jade hissed, and Rorra checked the moss canister on her weapon. Kalam pushed away from the railing. “I’ll tell Thiest.”

From the number of armed Solkis on deck and in the large fire weapon stations, Moon figured Thiest already knew.

Soon they sighted a border emplacement standing up out of the heavy jungle. It was a cluster of conical towers with fire weapons mounted atop their roofs. A broad balcony and pier extended out from the side of the largest tower, with a stairway and scaffold on the end, presumably for docking flying boats. “There’s Fell everywhere,” Stone muttered.

Moon hissed in agreement. The stench hung in the air, a foul taste in the back of his throat. He would have thought that traveling with Kethel for so long would make him used to it, but obviously that wasn’t the case. Kethel just hadn’t smelled that bad compared to this.

Rorra tightened her grip on the handle of her fire weapon. “Should we send Kalam inside?”

Stone shook his head a little. “I want both of you near us, in case we have to get away in a hurry.”

Kalam leaned around Moon’s elbow, his own fire weapon cradled in his arms. “I don’t want to go inside.”

“Hush.” Stone tilted his head, listening.

As the flying boat turned to ease down toward the emplacement, Jade went to stand with Ceilinel and Thiest. Moon stayed at the railing with the others. It was a better angle to watch Jade’s back.

The boat angled down to bring itself level with the pier, a cumbersome process. Moon stepped sideways, just far enough to get a glimpse of the boarding scaffold. Three groundlings waited there, two with gray skin and headcrests, similar to the Solkis, and one a dark-skinned Janderi. All wore leather harnesses with fire weapons over their clothing. So they’re alive in there, Moon thought. No one else was visible in the windows in the curved walls, or at the fire weapon stations atop the towers. With Fell in the area it made sense for the groundlings to keep inside. Moon didn’t know why there were cold prickles of unease traveling up and down his back, his prey reflex making him want to twitch.

Someone called out from below and the flying boat shivered as its motivator thumped to a halt. The Solkis on deck opened a gate in the railing and fastened lines to the ramp that extended out from the emplacement’s boarding scaffold. The three groundlings hurried across, their steps drumming on the wooden planks. They stopped on the deck, dumbfounded at the sight of Jade. Ceilinel moved forward with Captain Thiest, who said, “We’ve come from the conclave to view the situation and to render what assistance we can. Which of you is the warden of this march?”

“Our warden was killed,” the larger gray groundling said, and cast an uneasy glance at Jade. “I’m Neline, and as her second, I’ve been given charge. These are Ualck,” he nodded to the other gray groundling, and then the Janderi, “and Pathial. I hope you’ve sent more help than this.”

“Two more ships are following,” Thiest assured him.

“What’s happened here?” Ceilinel asked. “We know of the sightings of Fell—”

Neline interrupted, “There’s been more than just sightings. The Fell are all up and down this march, attacking settlements, border stations, and traders.”

Thiest threw an opaque glance at Ceilinel. “We heard they were being driven off by Raksura.”

The Janderi Pathial said, “They’re allied with the Raksura.”

Jade’s spines twitched. “That’s not possible.”

Pathial and Ualck stared at her, obviously shocked that she could talk. Neline said, “We have a trader who’s witnessed it.” He asked Theist, “You have Raksura prisoners?”

“No.” Ceilinel didn’t bother to expand on that. “You have an arcanist in this station? Or an esoter? A horticultural?”

“The esoter was killed with our warden.” Neline gestured sharply toward Jade. “It’s dangerous to have these creatures aboard your ship.”

Stone hissed under his breath, his gaze on the sky. He wasn’t the only one. A number of Solkis were on the walk atop the upper cabins, handheld fire weapons aimed upward, guarding the larger weapon stations at bow and stern. “They’re here somewhere,” he muttered.

Thiest was asking, “How were the warden and esoter killed? Was the station attacked?” Moon understood the confusion. He couldn’t catch any scent indicating a battle had taken place. No groundling blood, no rotting bodies, and no lingering scent of the discharge of fire weapons. The only sign was that heavy Fell stench. Someone else was coming up the boarding ramp, hidden by the angle of the boat.

Pathial said, “During the attack.”

Ceilinel’s frustration was clear. “When did this attack take place?”

Neline seemed offended by the question. “If you don’t believe us, the witness is coming now.”

“We didn’t ask to see your witness,” Ceilinel said, an edge to her voice. “I’m asking you for a coherent report.”

Moon belatedly put together the idea of confused groundlings unable to answer direct questions and single surviving witness. He said, “Jade, it’s a—” at the same time Stone said, “Jade, they’re—”

“I know,” Jade snapped. “Ceilinel, Thiest, back away from them.”

“What?” Rorra whispered.

“Fell ruler.” Moon eased forward in front of Kalam.

The figure who stepped off the boarding ramp was tall and lean, and very like the groundling form of an Aeriat, except for its pale skin and long dark hair. It made eye contact with Ceilinel and started to speak.

“It’s a Fell,” Rorra shouted, and lifted her fire weapon.

Moon wasn’t expecting much in the way of help, but the difference between groundlings who had little experience with the Fell versus groundlings who had fought them before was immediately evident. Thiest yanked Ceilinel away and shouted an order toward the steering cabin. An instant later the flying boat dipped sideways and ripped itself free of the gantry.

Neline staggered as the deck tilted. “What are you doing?”

Ceilinel scrubbed at her eyes, clearly furious. “It’s a Fell ruler, get away from it!” Rorra and Kalam aimed their fire weapons.

Thiest ordered, “Ceilinel, get inside.”

Jade stalked toward the ruler, her head tilted, angling her approach to shield the retreating groundlings. Moon shifted, ignored the nervous jitter from the crew, and moved to flank her.

Ceilinel backed toward the nearest hatch but said, “Can you make it tell us what happened here? Are there more Fell inside the emplacement?”

The ruler braced itself against the railing. It ignored the groundlings and smiled at Jade. It said in Kedaic, “You have a fine consort, queen. My progenitor is pleased.”

Moon fought a surge of fury and made his hiss sound amused. “Is that the best you can do?” He tried to keep his attention on the towers, knowing the ruler’s job was to distract them. Whatever it said, it couldn’t have expected to find a Raksuran queen on a groundling flying boat.

Jade snarled, “Your progenitor will be in pieces. She’s nearby, is she? She put you in that tower for a reason.”

From behind them, Thiest demanded, “What reason?”

Moon said, “They want to destroy this flying boat. They knew it was coming.” He realized Stone wasn’t on deck anymore. He hadn’t shifted and taken flight, and he hadn’t gone inside, so he must have vaulted the railing in the confusion. He’s right, if the Fell aren’t above us, they’re below us.

“They want to escape.” Urgently, Rorra said, “Thiest, you need to get this boat out of here, now.”

Taking mental control of the Kishan garrison would have allowed the Fell to know a boat was on the way. If Raksura were really hunting Fell through this region, then this flight must want to capture or destroy the boat so they would have a clear path to escape through Kish. Neline and Pathial stood like confused statues, as if they had no idea where they were or what was going on. Ualck backed away from the ruler, his face set in a grimace of horror, as the Fell influence faded and he realized what had happened.

“What about the garrison?” Ceilinel asked from the hatchway.

The towers were ominously silent, no one observing the standoff on the flying boat. Kalam, backed up against the cabin wall with Rorra, said, “They may be all dead.”

Moon kept his attention on the ruler. The fact that it wasn’t talking was worrisome. It looked like it was listening. The ruler had been the Fell’s first plan, and it hadn’t worked, and they had abandoned it. They would be working on their second plan now. “Jade—”

“You need to go, now!” Jade snarled at Thiest.

The ruler shifted and surged toward Jade. It either hadn’t thought Moon would interfere or the mental command from its progenitor had allowed no room for caution. Moon hit it from the side and Jade bounced upward and slammed into it from above. Moon rolled clear of its flailing legs as Jade thumped it down to the deck and opened its throat. Thiest turned toward the steering cabin and shouted, “Take us up!”

Then a deadly cloud of dakti shot out of the tower windows.

The dakti swarm fell on the boat like an avalanche. A figure slung itself off the nearest tower and shifted into a kethel in mid-fall. Fire weapons roared as the Solkis fired into the dakti and the boat’s two big forward weapons turned toward the towers. Moon leapt up to slash the first dakti to reach the deck, then slapped the next two out of the air. Jade took down a second ruler, and Stone’s dark form leapt out of the trees below to snatch the kethel and drag it down into the foliage.

Dakti swarmed Moon and he slammed them down to the deck, ripping at their throats and wings. They fled abruptly and Moon caught movement out of the corner of his eye. The tube of the big fire weapon at the top of the nearest tower jolted into hesitant motion. Moon’s spines shivered as it swung down to point toward the flying boat. That’s wrong, that’s definitely not supposed to happen.

Then two Fell rulers came over the top cabin. One hit Ceilinel and the other struck Thiest, dragging both up and off the boat. Jade braced to leap but wooden disks from the big tower weapon hit the steering cabin with a patter like a sudden heavy rain. Moon yelled an incoherent warning to Jade and she changed direction in mid-leap.

Moon grabbed the nearest groundling, a random blue-skinned person, and flung it down the deck toward the stern. Jade snatched up Kalam and leapt toward Moon. Moon turned, pounced on Rorra, and bounced down the deck.

As he reached the stern railing, the boat bucked. A fire cloud belched up out of the weapon stations and heat stung his scales. Something hit him from behind and bowled him down.

Moon struck the thick moss of a cabin wall. For a scatter of heartbeats he couldn’t move, then Rorra dug her blunt claws into his shoulder. Moon forced himself to lift his head.

He had Rorra clutched to his chest and the weight atop him was Jade and Kalam. Fire consumed the whole bow of the boat. The deck was an angled mountain now, a jagged crack across it. Something important in the boat’s structure had snapped. Groundlings lay sprawled on the tilted deck, some trying to stand or groping for their fallen weapons. The stench of burned flesh and moss filled the air.

Moon realized the freezing chill in his chest was shock, that the sight of the fire and the stink of the weapon’s discharge had frozen him in place. Jade let go of Kalam, who woozily fell over on the deck, then pushed herself up.

“Are you all right?” Moon croaked the words out with effort.

“Yes.” Jade glanced back and bared her fangs.

Rorra turned in Moon’s arms, and gasped in dismay.

The boat twisted and jerked sideways. Moon reached up to grab the railing. Her voice gravelly with smoke, Rorra said, “The motivator, they’ve lost steering.”

Kalam levered himself up. “They got Ceilinel and Thiest,” he said, his voice shaking from reaction. “Maybe—They wanted the patrol craft out of their way, maybe they’ll go—”

“They’ll want to feed before they run.” Jade grated the words out as she uncoiled and came to her feet.

In the air above the boat the dakti swarm reformed, swirling back down toward them.

Rorra flailed and Moon gave her a push to get her upright. She pointed toward the stern weapon stations, still intact above the cabin. “I need to get up there, see if the weapons are working. Kalam, come on!”

The two groundlings headed for the nearest hatch. As Moon shoved to his feet Jade said, “You go with them.”

Moon twitched his spines in a negative. The Solkis still alive on the deck fired handweapons up at the dakti, temporarily scattering the swarm. It made his burns scars ache with remembered pain. More groundlings staggered out of the hatch with big tube things, directing a spray at the flames still licking the steering cabin. He said, “We’ve got to get to that big fire weapon on the tower. If there’s Raksura here, they can’t get close while the Fell have it—”

Her voice rough with rage, Jade said, “Not ‘we.’ I can’t let you, not again.”

“You want to die, or you want to fight?” Moon snarled back. He could just leap into the fray and make her follow him, but even furious he knew that was a terrible strategy.

Jade barred her fangs. Above their heads the starboard stern weapon loosed a burst of fire, shattering the cloud of dakti. It was the perfect moment; Jade snarled and turned to leap to the railing. Then she flung herself across to the big tower.

Moon followed and hit the curved wall just below her. He clamped his claws on the weathered rock. Movement under him made him flare his spines, but the dark shape weaving through the heavy foliage below was Stone. His big form coiled around the base of the tower and vanished; he must be looking for a way in.

Jade dropped to the nearest windowsill and paused for a heartbeat. She might have been trying to taste the air, but the smoke and Fell stench was so thick, scent was useless. As she jumped inside, Moon swung after her.

His scales scraped against a folded metal arrangement that was probably meant to shutter the window, then he landed in a crouch. The room was wide and high-ceilinged, the thick walls carved out with shelves stacked with pottery jars and casks. Jade stood still, her foot claws retracted to keep from making noise on the stone floor, her head tilted toward the door. From this angle, Moon saw it opened into a larger space towards the center of the tower.

The shouting and fire weapons outside covered subtle sounds, but there was movement somewhere past the door. Moon stepped up beside Jade, ready to work out a plan with silent gestures, when Jade bolted through the door.

With a growl of surprise, Moon bounced after her and slammed into three dakti. He ripped the first one apart almost before he registered that Jade rolled across the floor, her claws clamped into a ruler. The second dakti clamped onto Moon’s head and ripped at his shoulders, opening gashes in his scales before he disemboweled it and tossed it aside. The third had almost reached a doorway before Moon caught it and snapped its neck. He turned, hissing, as Jade shoved to her feet, shaking the ruler’s blood off her claws.

This was the central stairwell of the tower, a large round space with various doorways, the spiral of the stairs leading up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Daylight fell down the open shaft, the heavy metal sliding door pushed to the side. A groundling lay in a dead crumpled heap by the wall across the way, one outstretched hand still reaching toward the stair.

A vibration shivered through the floor as the weapon above them worked again, and outside fire roared. Moon hoped that Stone had stayed on the ground, that he wasn’t the target. Jade stepped toward the stairway. Her expression was a grimace of doubt. Moon knew why; there was no way they could get up through that opening without the Fell having the advantage. They’ll rip our heads off as soon as we stick them up there, Moon thought grimly. Trying to distract them from the outside would be. . . . His gaze fell on the bulge of a large ceramic tank tucked up against the ceiling, right below where the large fire weapon must be. The flying boats had those same kinds of tanks for their motivator. Like those, this one had tubes leading up to it from the floor. And it had levers along the side.

As Jade eased forward, Moon tugged on one of her frills and pointed to the tank. She hesitated, then flicked a spine in agreement, in a way he interpreted as it’s worth a try.

Moon started toward it, keeping his steps silent. Jade flanked him, her attention on the spiral stair. Moon swarmed up the wall to the tank and pulled the levers. Something inside gurgled and the tubes made a whooshing noise. Above them the weapon coughed again, then there was a thunk and a noise like something large gagging.

Moon shoved off from the wall and Jade hissed, “Go, go, get out—”

A progenitor dropped out of the trapdoor and landed beside the stairs. She was huge, and she had her clawed hand wrapped around Ceilinel’s neck.

“There! There he is!” Heart said. She crouched on a flat rock half-buried in the heavily forested ground below the Kish towers, with First, the half-Fell dakti beside her. Vine and Serene perched in the branches above her. Parties of Indigo Cloud and Opal Night warriors hid all through the trees and heavy vegetation around them, trying to approach the Fell taking shelter in the emplacement. Heart called softly, “Stone, it’s us!”

Stone’s dark form flowed up on the rock and First retreated with a noise of alarm. Stone shifted to groundling and said, “I know it’s you, what are you doing here?”

He looked just the same, weathered and gray, but dressed in groundling clothes that had seen hard use. Heart flung herself into his arms. “I’m so glad you’re all right! We heard—And I had a vision—Is Moon all right?”

“He’s fine, he’s fighting Fell on the boat with Jade.” Stone grabbed her shoulders and looked down at her, baffled. “What are you doing here?”

Vine began, “There are Fell in the towers—”

Stone snapped, “I know there are Fell in the shitting towers!”

Serene finished, “—and we chased them here from the Reaches!”

“Pearl let you do this?” Stone demanded.

“Pearl’s leading us, with Malachite,” Heart told him.

Stone stared down at her, then slowly grimaced, still half incredulous. “Pearl?”

Heart felt a tug on her tail as First whispered, “Ruler has a groundling.”

Heart’s gaze snapped upward. Through the trees she saw a dark figure climb the outside of the nearest tower, a struggling figure tucked under its arm. She hissed in dismay.

“That’s Thiest, the groundling captain. I was looking for her,” Stone said. He shifted and leapt upward to batter the tree canopy aside.

Heart took the opportunity to tell Serene, “Better tell Pearl we’ve found Stone and Jade.”

Serene twitched her spines in acknowledgement and hopped into the foliage, disappearing with hardly a rustle. Vine edged sideways, his head craned to watch Stone.

Stone landed with the groundling in one hand and what was left of the ruler in the other. First sunk further behind the rock.

Stone set the groundling beside Heart and tossed away the ruler’s crushed body. He shifted out of his winged form as the groundling Theist stared at Heart in blank shock. She was gray-skinned with dark braided hair, her chest and shoulders badly scratched, bloody furrows from the ruler’s claws. She breathed hard and seemed stunned, though she clearly recognized Stone. He told her, “We can help your crew, but you have to tell them to stop the fire weapons so we can approach.”

She shuddered, then her expression cleared as she gained control of herself. She glanced at them all, then nodded sharply. “I can do that. Just get me back to the craft.”

After the next few days, Moon almost wished he could have spent the trip in a healing sleep. Waiting for Jade and the others to catch up made him edgy and there were too many things to worry about. And Stone was preoccupied, loitering in the stern, talking more to Delin or Diar than anyone else.

Once Moon convinced Chime that he was fully recovered, they started having sex late at night on top of the steering cabin. It was somewhat challenging, since they had to be quiet so Niran wouldn’t hear them and yell and bang on the ceiling. They were curled up together one night when Chime admitted, “I can’t stop thinking about the Reaches. If it got that far into Jandera territory, if Jade hadn’t stopped it in time . . .”

“But she did,” Moon said, and nipped his ear. He was pretending to be less affected by it than he actually was. Diar had managed to plot a rough map of the weapon’s effect, and how far it might have extended if it hadn’t been stopped. Stone had asked her not to show it to anyone else.

“I know, but—” Chime began, and Moon did something that distracted him from the topic for the rest of the night.

But by the next afternoon, Moon needed something else to think about, and he started to teach Shade how to fight like a groundling. Moon had been in many situations where he couldn’t risk revealing what he was by shifting but still had to defend himself. There was no reason to expect Shade ever would, but there was no point in not learning, either.

Shade was bemused at first and then increasingly interested. He had been taught the rudiments of fighting and hunting at Opal Night, but not how to use his strength in his groundling form. He was good at it; he was still built like a slender Aeriat but reaching maturity had added a lot of lean muscle.

They soon ended up with an audience of the warriors and everyone who wasn’t busy on the boat, with Delin sketching and taking notes. Bramble wanted to learn too, and Moon ended up teaching her, Lithe, and Merit. Chime got lessons too, though Bramble had to drag him down the deck. “I don’t need to learn,” Chime protested. “I’m never leaving the Reaches again!”

It helped pass the time and gave Moon something to think about besides Jade. He was worried about her for several different reasons, and wished they had had more of a chance to talk before the wind-ship departed.

She couldn’t be happy about the fact that he had left Chime, Shade, and Lithe to run off with a kethel and try to stop the Hians alone. It hadn’t worked, and he had almost gotten himself and Kethel killed, but since Moon hadn’t known if Jade and the others were trapped or dead, he didn’t see he had had much choice. But he was tired of worrying about it. They were on their way home, and he wanted everything to go back to the way it was. He figured if Jade was still angry when she got back, he could apologize and pretend convincingly to be sorry. He just wanted her to hurry up and get here so he could do it.

But they had come out of the jungles and crossed the grass plains, and were almost at the edge of the western wetlands before the queens and the rest of the warriors caught up with them.

I want to thank Nancy Buchanan for the title of this book, and for continued support through thick and thin. And I want to thank Jennifer Jackson, my agent, for not giving up, and Jeremy Lassen at Night Shade Books, for believing in a weird book about flying lizard people called The Cloud Roads. Thanks also to Janna Silverstein for editorial support and guidance on the Books of the Raksura series, and to Cory Allyn at Skyhorse, and artists Matthew Stewart, Steve Argyle, and Yukari Masuike for the beautiful art and cover design.

And thanks to everyone who offered support and encouragement when I really needed it, especially Troyce Wilson, Beth Loubet, Jessica Reisman, Felicia O’Sullivan, Lisa Gaunt, Megan McIntire, Bill Page, Nora Jemisin, Sharon Shinn, Kate Elliott, and all the people following the Raksura Patreon.

Martha Wells has written many fantasy novels, including The Wizard Hunters, Wheel of the Infinite, the Books of the Raksura series (beginning with The Cloud Roads), the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as YA fantasy novels, SF novellas (like The Murderbot Diaries series), media tie-ins, short stories, and non-fiction.

Her website is www.marthawells.com.