The Cloud Roads

Chapter Seven

They were to start for the Yellow Sea at dawn the next morning. Moon didn’t have much in the way of preparations to make. He borrowed a small cloth pack from Petal, just large enough to carry his old clothes and some dried meat and fruit she insisted he take. He didn’t have anything else to carry, though he was starting to covet the knife and belt, still in the pile of refused gifts outside his bower. It wasn’t as if he needed a knife in his shifted form, but he was used to having one as a groundling, and you never knew when it would come in handy. But he didn’t weaken enough to take it.

Before first light, Moon flew far enough away to be out of the hunters’ range and took a kill, a small grasseater. He purposefully overate, knowing he would need it for two long days of flight. It was still dark when he got back to the colony, so he stretched out on a ledge, pillowed his head on his pack, and napped.

The gray dawn light roused him, and he woke to see a group gathering on one of the terraced platforms below the pyramid. Stone and Flower were there in groundling form, plus Chime, Balm, and Jade, and three of the warriors who had come to the teachers’ common room with her yesterday.

Moon jumped off the ledge and glided down toward the platform. He landed just in time to hear one of the warriors say, “He’s probably run off. How long are we supposed to...” The words trailed off as Moon touched down on the paving and folded his wings.

“Wait?” Stone finished mercilessly. Chime gave the offender a derisive smile, Flower winced, Jade kept her expression blank, and everyone else looked uncomfortable. Impervious, Stone asked Moon, “You ready?”

Moon shifted to groundling, since everyone else was, and shrugged. Flower gave Stone a repressive look and introduced the three other warriors. “Moon, this is Branch, Root, and Song.”

Song was female, younger and a little smaller than Balm, but she had the same warm, dark skin and curling honey hair, as if they might be related. Root was the one who had speculated that Moon had run off, and also the one who had asked yesterday about stealing the flying boats from their groundling owners. He and Branch looked enough alike to be clutch-mates. Both had reddish-brown hair and copper skin, not unlike the young warrior who had attacked Moon yesterday, but in more subdued shades. If they were from a related clutch, that was just Moon’s luck. Root was typically slender but Branch had a bigger, broader build, which might mean his shifted form was larger. That could be a problem, Moon thought, resigned to trouble.

Moon had no idea what his chances were in a fight against a larger male warrior, or a group of warriors. What worried him the most was that he had never had a real fight in his shifted form that wasn’t to the death. Play-wrestling his Arbora siblings with claws carefully sheathed had been his last experience with it, and he had never fought just for dominance or to make a point.

But he had no intention of letting anyone else use him to make a point.

Jade told Stone and Flower, “We’ll be back as soon as possible. If we’re delayed more than a few days, I’ll send someone as messenger.”

“Take care,” Flower said, with a worried smile.

Everyone shifted, Moon following a beat behind the others. Stone didn’t say anything, but Moon was aware that he watched them, long after they leapt into the air and flew toward the west.

They flew all day, passing the point where the hilly jungle gradually gave way to flat coastal plain. As the afternoon became evening, Moon saw the plain had turned to marshland, with bright green grass and tall elegant birds undisturbed by their passage high overhead. In the distance the sea was a yellow haze.

When they reached it, the setting sun made the yellow of the water even more brilliant. The waves rolled up a wide beach bordered by low dunes and a band of yellow vegetation. The sand glinted with metallic and crystalline reflections. Jade had followed Stone’s directions well, and they reached the coast only a short distance away from the first landmark: a ruin rising up from the water, about a hundred paces out from the land.

Moon landed on the beach, shifted, and stretched. He wasn’t that tired; he had grown used to keeping up with Stone, and this hadn’t been very strenuous flying. It was also warmer here, despite the strong wind off the sea, and the sand was hot under his feet. He walked toward the waves as the others landed a short distance away.

From the look of this ruin, the groundlings who had built the blocky pyramid and the statues in the valley hadn’t made it as far as this coast. The structure was a series of big platforms, placed as if forming a circular stairway up to the sky, each roofless but ringed by tall thin columns linked by delicate arches. It was all made of metal and covered with verdigris, and the supporting posts in the water were heavily encrusted with little yellow barnacles. Moon reached the waterline and stepped onto the wet sand, letting the frothy edge of the waves run over his feet. The sky was tossed with clouds; a haze of rain fell far off to the south.

A little way up the beach, the others had gathered into a group to talk. Moon kept part of his attention on them, while he watched the waves suck sand from around his toes.

Chime came over to Moon, slogging through the loose sand. He stopped a few paces away and said abruptly, “Are you speaking to me?”

“What?” Moon stared at him, startled out of his mood. “Yes.”

“You’ve barely spoken to anyone except Stone since what happened with Pearl.”

Moon scratched his head, watching the last of the light glitter on the water. That wasn’t quite true, but he could see how it would look that way to Chime. “I didn’t have anything to say.”

“Somehow I find that hard to believe.” Chime folded his arms, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably. “What Pearl did was unacceptable, even if you’re a...”

“Groundling-eating solitary,” Moon supplied.

“Groundling-eating solitary, she shouldn’t have behaved that way. Since you were brought to the court by Stone... The groundling-eating part was sarcasm, yes?”

Moon gave in. Chime seemed to be offering friendship, in his own way, and he wasn’t going to turn that down. They were both outsiders among the Aeriat, and Chime seemed more out of place at times than Moon did. He just said, “Speaking of eating, let’s go look for dinner.”

They found tidal pools farther up the beach, in the rocky flats at the edge of the yellow scrub. The shallow pools had trapped fish, crabs, and other shelled creatures, and some water lizards, coming in to feed. The fish were too small to be more than a snack, but the lizards would make a more substantial meal. Moon shifted and slipped from pool to pool, catching surprised lizards, breaking their necks, and tossing them out for Chime to collect. They also found small patches of metal-mud, which Chime had heard about but never seen before. It was good for making colors for pottery, and Moon’s favorite groundlings, the Hassi, had also used it when they hunted on the forest floor. Once it dried on skin or scales, the metallic odor disguised your own scent. It also burned easily, something that Chime seemed to find fascinating.

The others all explored the ruin or the beach. They were divided into two camps, with Moon on one side, and everybody else on the other. Or two and a half camps, since Chime hovered in the middle.

When Root and Song wandered over to try their luck in the pools, Moon and Chime carried their catch over to the ruin, landing on a platform about halfway up the structure. As a place to camp it wasn’t ideal. There was no real shelter; the slender pillars didn’t provide any windbreak. But the metal was hot from the day’s sun and felt pleasant on Moon’s scales, and the elevation made it difficult for anything to come at them from the shore. For one night, it wouldn’t be a problem.

“These are a little chewy,” Chime commented.

“Save the guts,” Moon told him, “If we throw them in the water, they might attract something bigger.”

Chime glanced warily down at the waves washing against the pillars. “How big?”

Jade dropped onto the platform. Moon embarrassed himself dramatically by scrambling sideways and almost leaping off into the water before he could stop himself. It wasn’t that it was her; he had never reacted well to being startled while eating. When he was alone, it was when he was at his most vulnerable.

Jade stared at him warily. When he self-consciously sat down again, she said, “I wanted to ask you something.” She knelt gracefully and unfolded a leather packet. “I know all groundling cities are different, but do you have any idea how many of these I should offer?”

Moon leaned forward, frowning in consternation as big, lumpy, white objects spilled out of the packet. It took him a moment to realize they were pearls, huge ones. He flicked one with a claw, and it caught the light, reflecting soft iridescent blues, reds, greens. They had to be from the deepwater kingdoms, further out into the seas than Moon had ever ventured. “It’ll depend,” he told her. If the Yellow Sea groundlings traded with any waterlings, they might already have access to pearls like these. But this was still something they could trade anywhere along the Crescent Coast, to the Kish empire, the Hurrians. He was trying to remember the prices in Kishan coin that the Abascene traders had charged for passage on their ships, and mentally convert it to what the pearls were probably worth. And account for the fact that they were bargaining for flying boats that had to be worth more than any ordinary barge. “Start with five of the medium-sized ones. That’s probably low, but not insulting.”

Jade had begun to look impatient, but now her expression cleared. “I see. Thank you.”

Still chewing on lizard meat, Chime asked her, “What if they don’t want to trust us with their boats? If they say no, we’re stuck.”

Jade weighed the pearls in her hand thoughtfully. “Stone doesn’t think they will.”

Stone isn’t always right, Moon thought, but kept it to himself. If this didn’t work, they would have to move the court the hard way, and he wondered if Jade had thought about that. Moving a large group over land wasn’t impossible, just difficult and dangerous; groundlings did it all the time. He was about to say this when he caught something on the wind.

It was just a faint trace of other, of something that wasn’t sand, salt, or dead fish and lizards. Moon pushed to his feet, just as Jade said, “Did you smell that?”

Moon took a deep breath, his mouth open to draw the air past the sensitive spots in his cheeks and throat. “It’s gone now.”

Jade stood, the strong wind catching at her frills. “At least there’s no mistaking the direction.”

Chime twisted around, looking worriedly out to sea. “Was it Fell?”

“Probably,” Moon said, at the same time Jade answered, “Maybe.” Moon turned to look inland. With the wind off the sea so strong, anything could come at them from the land. His eyes caught movement against the darkening sky, but it was only Branch and Balm, circling high above the beach.

Jade said, “Fell wouldn’t be out at sea, not unless there was something they really wanted.” She was right about that; Fell would be just as vulnerable on long flights over water as Raksura.

“So they’re after us?” Chime looked up at her, his face uneasy. “Pearl wouldn’t tell them where we were going. Would she?”

“She’s not that far gone.” Jade sounded weary and disgusted. “And Stone wouldn’t let them in to speak to her. It has to be a coincidence.”

“A coincidence.” Moon couldn’t help himself. “Like Sky Copper being destroyed before they could accept Stone’s offer of alliance.”

Jade’s frills stiffened and she said, flatly, “I didn’t know you took that much of an interest.”

I didn’t know I did, either, Moon thought. He didn’t have another answer. He looked back toward the beach, watching the waves rolling up. After a moment, Jade hissed, picked up her bundle of pearls, and jumped off the platform.

Chime sighed pointedly, as if the effort of putting up with them was almost too much. “I’m not going to say anything,” he began, “But—”

“Don’t,” Moon said. “Just don’t.”

Something woke Moon, late into the night. He opened his eyes and didn’t move, trying to sense what it was. He was on the middle platform, lying on his side in groundling form to conserve his strength. The wind was cool, the dark sky streaked with clouds. Something warm leaned against his back, and something heavy lay across his waist. It took him a moment to identify it as Chime’s tail. Bemused, he thought, That’s... different.

Moon was fairly certain Chime had gone to sleep as a groundling and, from his steady breathing, Moon could tell he wasn’t awake. He shifted in his sleep? Moon had never done that, but then, much of the time his survival had depended on not doing that.

Chime was also still partly a mentor. He sensed something that made him shift in his sleep.

Moon eased up on one elbow. He hadn’t been included in the discussion about who stood guard when, and so had left the others to it. Now he saw Balm perched on the edge of the highest platform in her shifted form, leaning against one of the slender pillars, looking out to sea. The line of her body was tense, as if she searched the sky for something.

Clouds covered the waning moon, reflecting some of its light. The constant motion of the waves made it hard to pick out movement. Moon couldn’t scent Fell, but there was a strange odor on the wind, a slightly bitter tang.

Balm hissed a warning, flattening herself to the platform. An instant later a dark shape moved across the clouds. Moon dropped flat, and felt Chime jerk awake beside him. Moon squeezed his tail, whispering, “Don’t move.” Chime went still.

Moon didn’t shift, afraid it would draw the thing’s attention. Upper air predators often had frighteningly accurate eyesight, good enough to pick out a small loper in tall grass. If this thing was nocturnal, it might hunt by sound, movement, or strange senses unique to itself.

Time stretched, made more painful by the fact that flattened to the metal platform, Moon couldn’t see where the thing was. But it must be moving away. The strange scent slowly faded out of the wind.

Finally, Balm called, “It’s gone. It went north.”

Chime slumped in relief. Moon sat up and took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders to ease the tension. He heard the others moving, a rustle of wings as someone shifted. A head peered down at them from the platform just above, and Chime waved at it to show they were all right. Sounding shaken, he asked, “Did you see what it was?”

“Not a Fell.” Balm leaned down from the higher platform to answer him. “The body was long and narrow, like a snake. A big snake.”

“Stone didn’t say anything about big predators,” Jade’s voice came from above, more thoughtful than worried. “Maybe it’s only here during the warm season.”

Moon tugged on Chime’s tail, which at some point had wrapped firmly around his waist. “Could you...?”

Chime twitched in embarrassment. “Oh.” He let go of Moon and shifted back to groundling. “Sorry.”

Moon shrugged off the apology. “You shifted in your sleep. Is that normal?”

“No, not that I know of.” Chime looked warily out to sea. “You think I shifted because I felt it out there? Because I’m a mentor?” He lifted his shoulders uncomfortably. “But it was just an animal—albeit a big animal. I don’t know why it would cause that reaction, unless there was something magical about it.”

Moon nodded. “That’s mostly what I was worried about.”

“I don’t know,” Chime said again, sounding testy about it. “I’ll have to ask Flower, if we get back alive.”

“Get back alive?” Moon echoed, startled. It wasn’t a long trip, and Stone hadn’t indicated that it was a dangerous one. Granted, Stone had different standards for danger, but still. He took a wild guess. “How many times before this have you left the colony?”

Chime’s glare was palpable even in the dark. He lowered his voice and glanced warily at the upper platforms. “All right, yes, this is the first night I’ve ever spent away.” He shrugged uneasily. “I didn’t realize it would be this...”

“Dark?” Moon suggested.

The sound of gritted teeth was obvious. “That’s not funny.”

Moon heard the others settling down again. Song took Balm’s place as guard. There wasn’t anything Moon could say to Chime that wouldn’t be either pointless or patronizing. He just said, “Don’t put your tail on me,” and lay back down, pillowing his head on his arm. After some fidgeting and hesitation, Chime curled up behind him again.

The rest of the night was uneventful.

They reached the Golden Isles the next afternoon.

Moon saw the crops first: forests of short, ferny trees rising up out of the sea bottom, and beds of floating moss, planted with bushy root vegetables. Further in toward the islands, groundlings in small reed boats paddled swiftly between the thick clumps of foliage, tending it with long rods. They wore big, conical straw hats, and at first didn’t see the Raksura flying over them. Then Moon heard a thin shout distorted by the wind, and all the straw hats tipped upward. They seemed to be small people, their skin a honey-gold, their hair light-colored.

Just beyond the floating fields, the flying islands hovered high above the sea. Most were fairly large, though smaller chunks drifted in their wake. Some were high in the air, but others were only twenty or thirty paces above the water. They were all covered with conical towers and domed structures made of a white clay and roofed with reeds, connected by bridges and long galleries.

The flying boats were everywhere, docked at round wooden platforms stuck out into the air from the edges of the islands. They looked like ocean-going sailing ships, except the hulls were slimmer, less substantial, made of light lacquered wood or reeds. They were all sizes, from tiny rafts that could only hold a few people to double-hulled cargo craft more than three hundred paces long. Most had one or two masts, but they must be there for some reason other than sails, since there were no spars to support them.

Below the lowest island, floating on the water’s surface, was a large wooden platform built as a docking place for conventional sea-going craft. It was connected to the island above it by long wooden stairways. Two big flat cargo barges were moored at it, and a group of Islanders, in the midst of unloading clay jars from a third barge, pointed and stared and called out to one another.

Stone had said that they should land on the lowest platform, as it was the formal entrance to the city. Jade led the way as they glided down toward it, and Moon landed on the battered boards with the others.

The Islanders stared and scrambled around the stacks of clay pots and baskets to get a better view, or rushed to the railings of the nearby cargo barge. They seemed avid with curiosity and confusion, but not much afraid. They were short, the tops of their heads barely reaching Moon’s shoulder, most dressed for work in little but brief wraps around their waists. Most of them wore the straw hats. This close, he could see they had golden skin and golden eyes, and their hair was white, silky as floss.

More Islanders clattered down the steps from the upper island. This group seemed more intent, as if they meant to officially greet or repel strangers. They wore short robes, belted at the waist, and some wore lacquered armor pieces that protected chest and back. Their weapons were staves made of reeds wrapped together and lacquered hard. Still, Moon had the impression they didn’t encounter much serious fighting, and probably spent more time breaking up brawls on the docks.

The armed group reached the platform and approached cautiously. At some signal from Jade, the warriors shifted to groundling. Their audience exclaimed in astonishment.

After a moment of indecision, Moon shifted, too. He stood on the platform under that startled gaze, the sun warm on his skin, the strong wind off the water pulling at his hair and clothes. Every nerve itched; he felt horribly exposed. He had never shifted in front of groundlings unless he was in the midst of a last-ditch escape. This just felt... wrong.

The leader of the Islanders stepped forward, her expression wary. Her age was hard to tell; the fine lines at her eyes and mouth could easily have been from the sun and the omnipresent glare off the water. She spread her hands, saying, “I greet you on behalf of the Golden Isles... in peace?” She spoke Altanic, which was a relief to Moon.

Jade copied her gesture. “I am Jade, of the Indigo Cloud Court, sent by our line-grandfather, Stone. We seek to treat with you, to discuss a trade.”

“Oh, good.” The woman’s relief was obvious. “I’m Endell-liani, the overseer of cargo and trade. Will you come with me to talk with our Gerent? He is the elected leader of our trade guilds and speaker for our people.”

Jade inclined her head, the breeze making her spines flutter. “We would be honored.”

They followed her up the steps to the first island. The stair, supported by stone pillars with heavy wooden beams as cross-braces, was broad and steady. Alongside it, sharing the stone supports, was a pulley system for lifting small loads of cargo. Moon supposed large loads just went up in a flying boat.

As they climbed, Moon braced himself against the new array of curious stares from the Islanders on the next level; maybe it would be better when they went inside, where he wouldn’t feel so exposed. He thought he wasn’t betraying his nerves, but Jade kept glancing back at him with an air of suspicion, as if she thought he was doing something embarrassing.

Then Root, climbing the steps behind Moon, grumbled, “Why do we have to walk? Why can’t we fly?”

Or maybe Jade had been looking past Moon at Root, waiting for him to do something embarrassing. At least he had spoken the Raksuran tongue and not the trade Altanic the Islanders were using. Further down the steps, Song hissed at him and said, “Because it would be rude to the groundlings.”

Root laughed. “They don’t care. They want to see us fly. They stare like—”

Moon’s last nerve snapped. He stopped and turned abruptly back to Root. “I care.”

Root bristled, but Moon stood a step or two above him, looking down—a dominant position. Root gave in, twitching his shoulders in an unconscious attempt to lower the spines he didn’t have in his groundling form. He muttered, “Sorry.” Song emphasized the rebuke by slapping him in the back of the head.

Moon turned back, avoided Jade’s gaze, and kept climbing.

They reached the first island, where the stairs gave way to a paved plaza surrounded by white clay towers. Market stalls built of reeds or shaded with bright cloth canopies opened onto it. Most of the people gathered around the stalls were Islanders, though a few groundlings were of obviously different races, maybe traders from the barges. Moon smelled fish frying in sweet spices, and hoped the Islanders’ idea of hospitality included offering food.

Then Song said, “Jade, what’s that?”

Moon turned to look. Song pointed to the sky, squinting to see past the glare. Moon found the object immediately, a light-colored shape against the clouds. At this distance, it had to be something large. Very large.

Their Islander escort stopped and watched them uneasily. All the other Raksura had gone still, staring up at the sky. Peering up as well, Endell-liani said, “What is it?”

“There’s something up there, heading this way,” Jade answered.

It had a long snake-like body, white or pale yellow, and blended into the clouds it had dropped out of. The wings were huge, rounded like a water-skating insect’s, translucent in the sunlight. As light acrid scent tainted the air. Moon said, “Balm, this is what you saw last night?”

She glanced uneasily at him. “It’s the same shape, same scent.”

It drew closer and closer, past the point where Moon hoped they were all mistaken and that it wasn’t heading toward the islands and would turn away. It grew larger and more distinct, causing a bewildered stir among the watching Islanders. The hum of its wings was audible now, and growing louder.

“I see it now. It’s a cloud-walker.” Endell-liani waved a hand, baffled. “But they’re harmless. They live very high in the air, and come down only to feed on a certain plant that lies across the surface, much further out to sea. They don’t even bother our ships.”

That explained why Stone hadn’t warned them about it. A plant-eating upper air skyling wasn’t much of a threat. Except this one headed down, straight toward the Islanders’ harbor.

“It doesn’t look harmless,” Chime said, his voice low. “It looks like it’s coming down here for a reason.”

Moon had to agree. The creature plunged toward the harbor area just below this island, still not veering from its course. Sentries on the upper island shouted alarms; on the lower docks, Islanders backed away, scattered up the stairs and ladders onto the first island. Little skiffs in the water paddled rapidly away in all directions. One of the trade barges tried to cast off, though it was pitifully slow.

“This is so strange.” Endell-liani shook her head in horrified disbelief. “Perhaps it’s injured, ill, and it’s —”

The cloud-walker’s plunge turned into a spiral, its translucent wings a blur of movement. The head was big and round, the crystalline eyes multi-faceted; Moon couldn’t tell if it was focused on the harbor or the small floating island to one side of it. A cluster of flying boats hung off a platform on the island. The wind from the creature’s wings caused them to rock and clatter against each other.

For a moment it seemed as if the cloud-walker would do nothing, its shadow falling over the barges and docks while the Islanders froze in horror. Then the long, heavy length of its tail whipped around and struck the nearest cluster of flying boats. Moon flinched back as the hulls shattered. The platform broke in half, crashing down into a water-barge below. Wood cracked and groundlings screamed as the barge’s big mast shattered.

Endell-liani turned and ran for the end of the plaza, shouting, “Harbormen, assemble!”

The cloud-walker writhed in the air, as if the contact had been as painful for it as it was for the boats, the barge, and crew. It pushed upward, circling the upper island, knocking the roof off a tower with one casual blow of a foreleg.

“This can’t be a coincidence,” Chime said, turning urgently to Jade. “It’s here for us.”

He had to be right. Unless this giant plant-eater had suddenly developed a taste for groundlings, this attack was aimed at the Raksura. And the Islanders, their ships, the helpless groundlings on the trade barges, were going to take the brunt of it. Moon looked at Jade and demanded, “Are you just going to let this happen?”

She turned to him, her spines flaring out in anger. She said, “Then stop it.”

It was equal parts challenge and order.

Moon shifted and leapt into the air, hard beats of his wings taking him up. He needed to get above the thing as it swung around to take another dive.

It came around the top of the highest island and, instead of diving again, it veered off.

It’s heading for—Moon snapped his wings shut and dropped, the skyling’s swipe missing him by a bare wingspan.

Moon spread his wings again, catching himself on the wind as the cloud-walker overshot him. This is a problem, he thought, twisting in midair to follow its progress. He had expected it to ignore him in favor of the flying boats or the running Islanders. But if he couldn’t get on top of it, at least he could keep it moving, maybe tire it out.

It circled again and headed back for him, and he saw that it didn’t have claws. Its hands had stick-like fingers covered with flat pads, each capable of easily squeezing Moon to pieces. He banked and flew away from the islands, leading it out over the open sea.

It was fast, too fast. Moon was barely past the outer edge of the moored barges before its shadow fell over him. He dove, down and to the side. The displaced air as it rushed past him nearly sent him tumbling.

It circled again. Moon had no idea how he could keep this up much longer.

Then he caught movement from the corner of his eye. Root and Song were in the air, arrowing straight in toward the thing. He looked for the others and saw Jade, Chime, Balm, and Branch high overhead, angling to try to hit it from above.

The cloud-walker spotted Root and Song, and veered toward them. Moon drove himself upward, hard and high, reaching the others just in time to join their dive for the cloud-walker’s head.

From this angle Moon could see how the long snake-like body was articulated; he aimed for the joint just below the round head, hoping for a soft spot.

He struck the body, found the rim of the shell, and sunk his claws into the tough gray hide just under it, furling his wings to keep from being blown off. Jade slammed down just past him and hooked her claws over the edge of the shell. The others hit further up or down. The cloud-walker abruptly bucked, its body contracting hard enough to knock Moon’s feet loose. For an instant he was almost standing on his head. Exerting every ounce of his strength, he dragged himself down and landed again. Jade still held on, her spines flat with the effort, but the others were gone.

Moon didn’t have time to worry about whether they were still alive. He looked down the cloud-walker’s back to get his bearings, then did a double-take. That can’t be right.

Midway down the length of the creature’s body was a huge, discolored lump of flesh, a growth as big as a small hut. It glistened unpleasantly in the light, so mottled it was hard to tell if had once been the same color as the cloud-walker’s hide or not. Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe it’s not Fell-sent. Maybe the creature had just been maddened by illness.

Moon slapped Jade with his tail to get her attention. Jade tried to hit him back with her own tail, missed, then finally twitched around to look. She stared at the horrible thing, then turned to Moon. Instead of disgust, her expression held startled comprehension. She leaned over to shout in Moon’s ear, “Fell, in there!”

“What?” Moon shouted back. He looked at the tumor again. Fell were capable of some strange things, but this... “How can—Are you sure?”

Jade glared, and made a series of incomprehensible gestures with her free hand. She seemed sure.

The cloud-walker swung around to begin another dive, and there was no more time to discuss it. Moon motioned for Jade to stay back, and climbed toward the mass, hooking his claws around the edges of the cloud-walker’s chitonous plates to haul himself along.

Drawing closer, he thought he saw a dark shape inside the semi-translucent growth. Holding on to a plate with one hand, he poked the tumor cautiously. The texture was softer than he had expected, almost rubbery. He was glad the pads on his scaled hands weren’t very sensitive; he would have hated to touch this thing with his groundling skin. Moon braced himself and swiped his claws across the mass.

The surface split, but the cloud-walker didn’t react. The big body tipped down, diving toward another target. Moon clawed and tore at the mass. It split further, releasing an acrid stench he could scent even in this harsh wind. It abruptly collapsed, revealing the dark shape that lay inside. Moon stared in shock. Jade was right. Hidden inside the growth was a Fell ruler.

Unconscious, cradled in what was left of the tumor, it looked even more like a Raksura—a consort—than the minor dakti. Like them, it had webbed, leathery wings, but its dark scales were smoother, its face less animal and more Raksuran. Instead of spines, it had a rigid bone crest fanning out from its head. Moon surged forward. He had to kill this thing, now, before—

Its eyes snapped open, dark with feral rage. It leapt at him.

It hit Moon and bowled him backwards. He lost his grip on the cloud-walker’s plate and tumbled right off its back with the ruler on top of him. Moon caught its wrists, keeping its claws away from his throat, and jammed one foot against its stomach to hold it off. It whipped its tail around and caught him across the back, the sharp barb barely deflected by his spines. It laughed in his face, knowing if Moon let go, it would have him. The only safe way to kill a ruler was to catch it while it was asleep or drop on it from behind, and Moon had missed those chances.

Past the edge of the ruler’s spread wings, Moon saw movement, a flash of blue and gray Raksuran scales. I hope that means what I think it means. He snarled at the ruler, wrenched free, and fell away.

It howled with amusement and angled its wings to dive at him. Just as Jade hit it from behind.

There was a confused flurry of wings and tails, a spray of black Fell blood. The stench of the blood went straight to Moon’s head; he lost all caution and flapped to get up to them to re-join the fight.

Something slammed into his back, a wing beat hard enough to stun him. Moon plummeted, unable to catch himself. A heartbeat later he slammed into water, the force of his fall sending him straight down to strike the shallow, sandy bottom. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs and he flailed for the surface. But his claws caught in a soft mesh, like a net threaded with layers of filmy cloth. Not cloth, moss and water plants. He had hit the water in one of the Islanders’ floating fields.

He tore at the strands wrapping his arms, trying to rip the soft fibers away and fight to the surface. While the moss shredded easily, the net itself wouldn’t tear.

Moon thrashed toward the surface. The stuff wrapped around his wings, his tail, as if it were alive; the weight dragged him down. Don’t panic, he thought, his heart pounding frantically. He couldn’t go up so he tried to go down, struggling to get below the net so he could swim out from under it. He scraped the bottom, sand and shells scratching against his scales, but the whole mass moved down with him, twisting around him. He hadn’t had a chance to take a deep breath before he went under. His lungs burned as he ripped at the net, fighting the drag of his own trapped wings. He knew he had only one choice left: he shifted.

Much of the weight dragging at him vanished but water flooded his lungs. The net still wrapped his body. Blind, choking, he tore upward but the moss and netting closed over him, blocking his way to the surface. He thought, You should have taken the knife. Happy now?

Then everything went dark and drifting.

The next thing he knew, someone pounded him on the back. Moon choked and coughed until he got a ragged breath of air.

An arm around his chest held him up just above the moss-clotted water, an arm with scales. In instinctive reflex he tried to shift again, but nothing happened. He thought woozily, That’s either very bad or—He let his head drop back and saw the person holding him was Jade.

She hung off the side of a big flying boat, clinging with one hand to a rope. Above her, Chime gripped the side of the boat with his claws, one hand wrapped around Jade’s wrist to keep her from falling. An Islander woman suspended beside them wore a roped harness that let her hang nearly head-down in the water. She sawed at the net with a long blade. Moon didn’t know if Jade had really killed the Fell, if the others had survived the fight. “Where—” It came out in a barely audible rasp.

“Hold still,” Jade said, her voice gritty with the effort of holding up his grounling form plus the water-logged weight of the net and the moss. He wanted to tell her to let go. The only thing supporting her was Chime’s grip on the boat; if she fell, they would both be trapped in the net.

The weight dropped away abruptly, and Jade gasped in relief. The Islander woman leaned back in the harness, shouting, “He’s free! Pull, pull!”

Chime hauled at Jade, and Jade dragged Moon up. He held on, watching the water and the sinking tangle of net and moss recede, until Jade pulled him over a wooden railing.

Moon grabbed it and hung on, determined not to collapse. Several Islanders retreated to the central mast, where they hauled on the ropes attached to it. The sails unfolded from the sides of the mast in a light wooden framework, extending out like giant fans.

The deck swayed under Moon, and he thought his head was swimming. Then he realized the boat was lifting up from the water, heeling over as it rose in the air and turned back toward the city. “Did you kill the Fell?” he croaked.

“It’s in pieces,” Chime told him, jittery with relief. “The others are looking for its head. The cloud-walker just flew away, as fast as it could.”

Jade added, “The Fell was controlling it.” She turned abruptly to the Islander woman, who was being helped out of her harness by two sailors. “Anything you want, anything in our power to give, just ask.”

The woman was startled, looking from Jade to Moon. “It isn’t necessary. You drove the cloud-walker away.”

“It is necessary,” Chime hissed in Raksuran, and turned half away to look out over the sea. “That Fell was after us. It caught the cloud-walker last night, and followed us. Once it realized we must be here for the boats—”

“Yes, it followed us.” Jade turned back to him, her voice a low growl. “Pearl didn’t send it here.”

Moon wanted to argue, but just held on to the railing. A Fell ruler hadn’t decided to follow them on an off chance; it had known they had an important task, even if it wasn’t certain just what the task was. And someone had told it.