The Harbors of the Sun

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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.”

Bramble braced herself as Delin banged on the door of his cage. One of the Hians opened it. Delin said, “She is awake, and I need to take her to the physician.”

The Hian said, “She should stay here.”

Delin gestured in frustration. “The physician must examine her before she collapses again!”

Bramble choked out a moan and clutched her stomach, letting herself half-fall against the wall. The Hian stared at her, then stared at Delin. Delin said, “You saw what happened to Aldoan. The effect may be delayed. Bramble could die.”

The Hian hesitated, then gestured for them to follow her down the corridor. The other Hian on watch at their door followed.

When Bramble had first seen the hanging waterskins in the healer’s room, she had committed all the labels to memory. She had written them down on a piece of paper from Delin’s small stock and fortunately he had recognized the glyphs. He said, “This is a variant of the scholar’s notation of Kedmar, that is used in the library.” He tapped one. “From the indicators for predator and eradication, I surmise this one could be the simple we know as Fell poison. But this one has indicators for liquid and danger. It’s the only one with such a notation.” He met her gaze, his expression serious. “That’s the one we need.”

Bramble held that image in her memory as they approached the healer’s room. “Is she there?” Delin called out. “If she is not there, we will wait inside. Bramble can’t walk back and forth in this condition!”

Exasperated, one of the Hians said, “You were the one who wanted her to walk here in the first place—”

As Bramble had hoped, the healer stepped out into the corridor. “What’s wrong?” She was clearly startled to see Bramble on her feet. “Are you better? You should be lying down.”

“I wanted you to examine her,” Delin said as they reached the doorway. “She seems much better, but has strange pains.”

Bramble gripped the door frame, screwing her face up into a grimace as if she was about to be sick. “Can I sit down?”

The healer motioned to her. “Yes, go ahead—”

“Perhaps it’s the weather here,” Delin said. “I confess, I have felt lately as if the air is thick and difficult to breathe.” As the healer turned toward him, clearly alarmed by that statement, Bramble slipped inside the room and sat down heavily on the bench. The waterskins hadn’t been moved, and her heart thumped in relief. Delin stepped sideways and the healer moved with him, trying to peer into his eyes. As the healer’s back blocked the doorway from view, Bramble leapt across to the waterskins.

Bramble found the one Delin had chosen and took it down. She sniffed the bone cap and got a trace of acridity but no definite odor. This has to be right.

Bramble pressed the skin to her stomach, steeled herself, and shifted. She took the bag with her, the way she could take clothing and jewelry. She had never carried something as big as the waterskin with her through a shift. It caused a distinctly odd warm sensation in her chest. She took a sharp breath and stepped out into the corridor.

The startled healer blinked down at Bramble’s scaled form. The other Hians tensed warily, and one half-lifted her fire weapon. Bramble said to the healer, “I feel better this way, not as sick.”

“Ah, I suppose that makes sense—” the healer began.

Delin cried out, staggered sideways, and collapsed against the nearest Hian. She tried to catch him but he jerked out of her hold and fell to the floor. He clutched his chest, his eyes rolling back in his head, and jerked his legs as if having a seizure. Trying to get to him, the healer shoved past the other Hians. With their attention diverted, Bramble said, “I’ll get help!” and darted down the corridor.

She was lucky that the healer’s room was near the stern of the ship. She dropped down the nearest stairwell, heard voices in the corridor, and jumped up to flatten herself against the stem-like beam that crossed the ceiling. She pressed against the moss and didn’t breathe as two Hians passed beneath her. She couldn’t tell if she was just imagining the waterskin’s phantom weight against her scales. She hoped the fact that it was poison wouldn’t affect her. Though if it did, there was so much of it, surely she would have dropped dead by now.

The Hians turned into another corridor and Bramble dropped soundlessly to the floor. She skittered around the next two turns, took refuge in an empty room when someone else passed, and made it down the next stairwell.

She avoided the heavily guarded corridor that led down to Merit’s cage. She needed a big distraction before she could get him out, though if they were lucky the poison would work fast enough to provide that.

If this boat was like Callumkal’s, then the cistern was down a level in a supply hold. Bramble rounded the next corner.

That was when a Hian stepped out of a doorway halfway down the corridor. She was facing away, still sliding the door closed. She wasn’t wearing a fire weapon. Bramble bounded forward and leapt.

The Hian turned toward her but didn’t have a chance to make more than a strangled yell before Bramble slammed into her. Bramble ripped her claws across the Hian’s head and felt them glance off the armor plate. Unexpectedly strong hands clawed at her face, and Bramble stabbed her claws into the Hian’s neck. Blood bubbled up and the Hian gasped, the breath strangled in her ruined throat.

The Hian went limp and Bramble let the body drop. She tilted her head to listen. No running footsteps sounded from nearby corridors. The moss walls tended to dampen noise, and there must be no one near enough to hear. Bramble twitched away the blood on her claws and thought, I need to hurry.

She pulled the body into a cabin, slid the door closed, and hurried on. Hopefully no one would notice the blood on the soft cork floor, at least not right away. At the next junction she found the narrow stairs down to the lower level. At the bottom was a corridor with a low ceiling, with larger stem-beams. Just like Callunkal’s boat, this was the hold, where the supplies were stored.

Bramble pushed open the first sliding door and slipped inside. The space was dark, crammed with ceramic containers and bundles and boxes, and it smelled grainy and of sweet greens and earthy roots. The smell was enough like the storage chambers in the Indigo Cloud colony tree that homesickness pierced Bramble’s heart like a claw. She passed it all by, heading toward the cold wet scent toward the far end.

The big ceramic cistern held the water supply, and also rainwater from collectors that ran up to the top of the flying boat. It had a hatch to the outside where it could be filled and drained. Pipes ran from it to the water flushes in the ship’s latrines and the drinking water taps in the cabins. Bramble knew all about it from helping fill the one on Callumkal’s boat.

She opened the small cover in the top that allowed the water to be checked for freshness, then shifted to her groundling form. To her relief, the waterskin was still intact, still heavy with the poison.

She pulled the stopper out and dumped the clear liquid into the water. The healer was the only one she regretted, but then the healer was the one who had probably made the poisons Vendoin had used on everyone on the sunsailer.

She hoped Vendoin and Bemadin died in pain.

As she closed the cover, the pipes whooshed as someone used one of the water sources somewhere in the ship. That’s that, Bramble thought.

She rolled up the empty skin and hid it under a pile of bags, then slipped back out of the hold to the corridor. She leaned against the door, bracing herself. Now she needed to try to release Merit. If there were too many Hians blocking her way to him . . .

Let’s see how much damage I can do before they catch me, Bramble thought, and crept up the corridor.

After Moon made a couple of brief experiments, it became obvious that a number of the insect-lizards liked the bug paste enough to follow it anywhere. Fortunately they were indifferent to Raksura in either form, and didn’t seem to notice Moon or Stone except to zip out of their way at the last instant. They were only about as long as Moon’s forearm, and their mouths were small furry scoops meant for inhaling small bugs, but there were hundreds of them and in combination their tiny sharp claws could have done some damage had they been so inclined.

Watching their preparations in the gathering darkness, the kethel followed Moon and Stone down to the valley. Plowing through the high grass behind them in its groundling form, it asked, “What do I do?”

“Stay back and don’t eat anybody,” Stone told it.

It didn’t seem satisfied with that, but didn’t object.

Once night settled over the valley, Moon took flight toward the Hians’ boat. He carried Stone in his groundling form, and Stone carried the packet of paste.

A cloud of the insect-lizards followed them up and over the rocks toward the beach, their buzz and whir a dull roar easily covering the sound of Moon’s wingbeats.

The bright beams of the distance-lights were created by the same moss that kept the boat aloft and made the Kishan’s other tools work. The two lights on the starboard side moved in slow patterns over the cliffs and beach, and the two on the port side crossed the sky, watching for anything approaching by air.

Moon had memorized the pattern earlier, and went down the cliff face to the beach in a series of controlled drops, careful not to outpace their insect escort. He and Stone huddled behind a rock at the edge of the beach as the cloud clustered around them, and one insect-lizard landed on Moon’s head. The boat’s distance-light passed over them, then hesitated and returned. Stone, jammed between Moon and the rock, breathed, “Don’t move.”

Moon managed not to, even with the damn insect nuzzling one of his frills. The light made the cloud buzz around even more wildly. Then the beam moved on, the two Raksura hidden by dark rock and silver sand and the flitter of hundreds of iridescent wings.

One distance-light moved down the beach and the other swept over the waves. Moon tightened his hold on Stone and leapt into the air.

That created a vulnerable moment when the rush of air from his wings caused the insects to drop back, but they caught up with him again.

Moon had gauged his angle of approach carefully, and came up under the flying boat’s stern. As the next roving distance-light swept past it caught only the cloud of insects trailing him.

Stone was strong enough to hold on to Moon’s collar flanges without help, so Moon had both hands free to catch hold of the thick wiry moss of the boat’s hull. The boat was stable in the air, and the moss absorbed sound and vibration, so he knew no one had felt his landing.

Stone freed one hand to carefully smear the packet of paste onto the moss, then Moon climbed up the hull away from the now very excited cluster of insects. He stopped well below the boat’s rail, and Stone swung around to grip the moss. It made Moon nervous; Stone’s groundling form was strong, but it wasn’t as if he had claws. “You’ve got it?” he said, keeping his voice below a bare whisper.

“Yeah, go.” Stone started to haul himself up the hull toward the rail.

Moon climbed away toward the bow. He heard a couple of Hians move along the deck, but their steps weren’t hurried.

The steering cabin on this boat was in the center section, lifted above the hull to look down on the bow deck, with two levels of wide windows. One small distance-light lit the bow.

The idea was for Moon to look for the prisoners in the front part of the boat and Stone the back, and Moon hung just below the railing, trying to decide how best to get into the cabins. There were no windows in the lower hull, like there had been on Callumkal’s flying boat. He sensed movement on the deck and realized he had come too far forward. He swung sideways, then hissed as a flash of bright light blinded him.

Above, someone called out in alarm and more voices echoed her. Moon’s luck had just run out. He could have dropped off the boat but getting back up to it without the insect-lizard cloud as cover would be impossible; Stone would be on his own.

Moon made the decision in a heartbeat. If he couldn’t help search for the prisoners, he could provide a distraction.

He swung over the railing, shifted in mid-motion, and landed as a groundling in the center of the light on the open deck. As he stood up out of a crouch he heard shouts and startled footsteps outside the circle of illumination. He could just make out the open galleries on either side of the raised steering cabin that would make good vantage points for the Hians. If someone shot him with a fire weapon, this was going to be a short distraction. The weapons had to shoot a small wooden disk first, that allowed the fire to find its target, so Moon would have some warning. If they used the artifact weapon on him, he suspected there would be no warning at all.

Then from somewhere above him, Vendoin’s voice spoke in Altanic, “Moon. I didn’t expect to see you. I assume the others are with you?”

“I thought you assumed the Fell ate us?” Moon replied in the same language. He placed her location in the steering cabin near a side window or door.

“The moss told us the sunsailer reached the shallows. The others are with you, then?” There was a trace of what might be impatience in her voice. Maybe she didn’t want to talk about the chaos of her retreat from the sunsailer.

“They sent me ahead to talk.” He knew she wouldn’t believe that he was alone, so there was no point in trying to convince her of it.

“That seems unlikely, to me. I know how your queen prizes you.”

Moon bared his teeth briefly. “Well, you never really knew us at all, did you. Just like we never knew you.”

The silence lasted a beat longer than Moon expected. “So what did your queen send you to say?”

“You didn’t talk to the Bikuru who lived near the Hian scholar in the river trade town. They had her maps and writing. Now we have them.” If his and Stone’s theory was wrong, and Vendoin had been able to find whatever she had wanted in the scholar’s house, this was probably the point where Moon would get burned alive.

This time the silence stretched. The lights had drawn swarms of tiny nightbugs, and the insect-lizards from the mounds zipped around just out of range of the illumination. The air was humid and sweat stuck Moon’s shirt to his back. His night vision was ruined by the lights, but he tracked the position of the armed Hians watching him from the deck and the platforms off the cabin above by their breathing and the way their bodies blocked the breeze.

Then a door opened in the side of the steering cabin. Vendoin’s voice said, “Do not move, Moon. I would dislike killing you.”

Moon snorted in derisive amusement. A group of Hians moved out onto the gallery, into the light. Moon had never seen so many handheld fire weapons, even when the Fell had attacked the sunsailer. He recognized Bemadin first, then Vendoin. Then his attention was riveted by the scent of nervous Raksura, and two more Hians dragged Merit forward.

He was in his groundling form. From the way his eyes blinked and his captors seemed to be holding him upright, Moon knew the damp patches on the front of his shirt must be Fell poison, recently forced down his throat. He couldn’t see the scale pattern on Merit’s skin, but the play of light and shadows might conceal it.

Merit trembled, watching Moon with wide eyes. Moon said, “Bramble, Delin, and Callumkal?”

“All alive and well,” Vendoin said, before Merit could answer. “Please speak only Altanic. If you speak to each other in your own language I will have Merit killed.”

So Bramble and the others were alive, but maybe not so well. In Altanic, Moon said, “Merit, are you and the others all right?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was hesitant and a little husky. “I don’t know where Bramble is. I haven’t seen Delin in—”

Vendoin interrupted, “That’s enough.”

Moon suppressed a snarl. He hoped that meant they had been held separately on the flying boat, and not that Bramble was dead.

Vendoin said, “Of course you don’t have these hypothetical maps and papers with you?”

“Hypothetical?” Moon wondered if this was an attempt to test him. He thought the fact that no one had tried to take him prisoner yet was a good sign. “If you didn’t want the scholar’s writing why did you stop there to kill her?” He heard Bemadin’s sharp breath, and other Hians glanced at Vendoin. He added, “Did you have to kill everyone in the house? The kids, too?”

Her voice tight and harsh, Vendoin said, “We did not kill them.”

Another Hian moved uneasily, something uncertain in her body language. This was obviously a topic of some dismay among them. Either there had been disagreement over whether to kill the scholar or not, or . . . Maybe her and her children’s deaths had been an accident, somehow. “They were pretty dead when we saw them,” Moon said.

“It was unintentional,” another Hian said. The Hian added, “I am Lavinat. You speak for the Raksura?”

“I speak for the Indigo Cloud Court, and the families of Delin-Evran-lindel of the Golden Isles and Callumkal of Kish-Jandera.” It might help to remind the other Hians that it wasn’t just them against the savage Raksura. “How do you unintentionally kill a whole house full of groundlings?”

Vendoin tried to answer and Lavinat spoke over her, “It was the weapon. I assume you know all about it.”

Something about Lavinat made Moon wonder if it was still Vendoin who was in charge here. “I know it kills Fell. If that’s what you want to do with it, it’s none of our concern.”

Her voice low, Bemadin said in Kedaic, “Don’t bargain with him. They will kill us.”

Vendoin ignored her. “Where are the papers you took from the scholar’s home?”

“Her friend’s home, the Bikuru,” Moon corrected. He knew the Hians must have searched the scholar’s house. “Stone has them.”

Vendoin didn’t seem surprised. “He will give them to us in exchange for you.”

“Or you could use the weapon and take them off his body,” Moon said.

Vendoin said, “We prefer not to waste the weapon.”

Then Lavinat stepped forward. “You haven’t asked us to release our captives yet. I find that very strange, that you stand here and bargain. As if you are waiting for something to happen.”

There was a murmur of confusion from the other Hians.

Moon tilted his head. Lavinat was clever. That could be a problem. Footsteps ran frantically down a corridor somewhere behind the cabin, so it was time to end the conversation anyway. Bemadin glanced at Lavinat, and said, “What does that mean?”

Lavinat said, “It means he’s trying to distract us.”

Moon flung himself backward and shifted in one motion. Someone shouted and he bounced up off the bow deck just as the wooden disks from fire weapons landed beneath him. The fault of the weapon was that once the disk was fired, the wielder couldn’t change the aim. Fire splashed on the deck, rippling across the soft surface as Moon landed on the platform next to the steering cabin. The Hians had already fled back inside, dragging Merit with them. Two armed with fire weapons still stood on the platform. Moon slammed one off, caught the other by the throat, ripped the weapon out of her hands, and tossed her over the side. Then he swung up on top of the cabin roof before any of the Hians inside had a chance to shoot at him.

The tricky part was not giving them time to threaten to kill Merit. Though shooting Merit without injuring any of the Hians near him would have been difficult anyway, as even the small fire weapons had never been meant for close quarters fighting.

Moon rolled across the cabin roof and braced himself on the edge. From here he had a view down into the open cubby against the boat’s starboard side, the one that housed the distance-light and the large fire weapon, big enough to repel major kethel. The two Hians at the station looked outward, expecting another attack from the air.

Peripherally aware that a Hian had climbed to the top of a cabin toward the stern and was aiming another bulky fire weapon at him, Moon fit his claw into the first trigger of his stolen weapon and pulled. Wooden disks shot out of the nozzle and landed in the mossy material of the cubby, and on the big fire weapon. The two Hians looked up in horror as Moon hit the second trigger and fire streamed out.

Moon rolled away as the large fire weapon thumped and the whole boat jerked sideways, like a giant fist had punched it. You can’t let them hit each other, a groundling had told him turns ago, on a trade road within the Kish border, when he had asked why the weapons guarding the camp were spaced so far apart, nothing else can catch one on fire. As the boat swung around, the Hian taking aim at him from the other cabin roof staggered and fell. She struck a lower platform railing before vanishing into the darkness on the port side.

Moon rolled back as smoke poured out of the hull. The cubby now hung sideways, connected only by a few broken stem-beams, and the steering cabin windows on that side were shattered. The two Hians in the cubby, their weapon, and the distance-light were nowhere to be seen. He shoved up to a crouch and by pure luck avoided a scatter of wooden disks that hit the spot where he had been lying. He grabbed the top frame of the broken window and swung around to flip himself through.

Moon landed on the steering cabin floor to see the Hians inside either ducking for cover or staring out the starboard window at what remained of the firing cubby. Merit huddled in the back corner, two Hians atop him, though Moon wasn’t sure if they were pinning him there or had fallen on him when the weapon exploded.

He grabbed one by the shoulder and the other by the neck and flung them into the group on the far side of the cabin. In his peripheral vision he caught sight of Lavinat crumpled at the base of the wall, but he didn’t see Vendoin. He snatched a fallen fire weapon from the floor as Merit flailed to stand. Then he grabbed Merit up and slammed through the door into the inner corridor.

Bramble had to cram herself into a storage cubby not much bigger than her body to hide from the searching Hians, but finally they moved on. She squirmed out, crept back down the stairwell and to the corridor where their cage was.

But when she reached it, it was unguarded and empty. They moved Merit, she thought, obviously, you idiot, and resisted the urge to rip at the walls. They would be using him as a hostage against her.

She went forward, back to where Delin’s cage was. Maybe in the confusion he had been left with only one or two Hians to watch him. But she heard voices in the corridor ahead and hurriedly dropped down a narrow set of stairs. She found herself in a cramped, low-ceilinged corridor, with ceramic containers on either side that stunk so strongly of moss it blotted our every other scent.

She was trapped there for a little time, as Hians crossed back and forth through the stairwell just above. She hissed silently to herself, seething. The poison in the water was not working as quickly as she had hoped.

Then suddenly the whole boat bucked under her feet. Her shoulder hit a container and she bounced off and rolled on the floor. In the stairwell, Hians shouted in dismay and alarm, and their steps pounded away.

Bramble scrambled to her feet and climbed the stairs. The foyer and the connecting corridors were empty now, but she hesitated, unsure which way to go next. She heard a shout from her left and turned right to bolt down that corridor. A Hian shouted again from behind her and she heard the distinctive cough of a fire weapon.

Bramble dove forward and the disks hit the floor, but as she rolled away she caught sight of one stuck to her arm. Horrified, she clawed it off. The Hian strode forward, lifting the weapon.

Then something gray grabbed the Hian from behind. Bramble heard the snap as the Hian’s neck broke before the limp body dropped to the floor. And she found herself staring at Stone.

All the breath left Bramble’s body in a startled whoosh. His clothes were worn and stained and he smelled like dirt and sweat and home, and she thought she was hallucinating.

Delin peered out from behind him. His eyes were wild but determined. He whispered, “Bramble, we’re escaping!”

Stone hissed, “Bramble, get over here!”

She shoved to her feet, staggered, and flung herself at Stone. He caught her, squeezed her briefly, and set her on her feet. “What— How—” she tried to ask. “You found us!”

“Now come on,” he said, and he sounded just the way he always did, as if she was a baby playing too long in the nurseries and delaying a meal.

Light-headed with relief, Bramble caught Delin’s wrist and followed Stone.

Moon dove down a stairwell and slammed aside two Hians at the bottom. This was an interior corridor with tightly woven moss walls, stem-like beams arching overhead, and light coming from gelatinous globes filled with glowing fluid mounted in ridges in the ceiling.

Merit clutched his collar flanges, gasping, “Moon, Bramble got away, she’s somewhere in the boat, that’s why they brought me up here, to threaten to kill me so they could catch her, but they couldn’t find her— Delin is locked up somewhere—I don’t know where Callumkal is—”

“Stone’s here, looking for them,” Moon told him. Shouting sounded from all directions and the stink of burned moss filled the air. He lifted the weapon and pointed it toward the end of the corridor and the steering cabin, then hit the first trigger to spray wooden disks. The second trigger sent fire streaming after them. It wasn’t as good as a big fire weapon; the moss didn’t seem to catch but singeing it filled the corridor with acrid smoke.

Merit clinging to him, Moon took the next cross corridor and slammed through the hatch at the end, out onto another platform. Moon turned to trigger the weapon again, aiming back through the hatchway. The burst of fire filled that corridor with smoke. He tried it again, but no more wooden disks came out.

Moon tossed the weapon over the rail and climbed up the wall, pausing at the top for a careful look across the cabin rooftops. No movement, and the remaining distance-light couldn’t turn far enough to shine on this area. He slung himself and Merit atop the roof and started toward the stern.

They reached the end of the roof and Moon crouched to see over the edge. The distance-light and fire weapon platform was much lower down on the far end of the stern, and there was another cabin section in the way. If they were quiet, the Hians on that platform shouldn’t hear them. He whispered to Merit, “They gave you Fell poison?” The light was bad but he still couldn’t see scale markings on Merit’s brown skin.

“A little,” Merit whispered back. He shivered and wiped his mouth. “I don’t think they realized how much I spit back up.”

The sound of waves breaking on the beach and on the rocks under the metal causeway was louder. The explosion of the bow’s fire weapon must have damaged whatever had held the boat steady on the lines of force that crossed the Three Worlds, and the crosswind had driven it out over the ruin. The hum of the insect-lizards rose, as those driven off by the explosion returned to the lure of the bug paste.

Moon growled under his breath. “Any time, Stone.”

Merit whispered, “What are we waiting—” Below, a hatch opened under a stairwell landing. With a faint choked sound, a Hian flew out and over the deck railing, vanishing as she fell into the shadows. “Stone!” Merit gasped.

Moon tightened his grip on Merit and caught the edge of the roof. As three dark figures stepped onto the platform, he swung down to land beside them.

“I couldn’t find Callumkal,” Stone said. Bramble stood beside him in her scaled form, her spines twitching in agitation and the salty tang of fresh blood on her scales. She and Delin smelled like Merit, a bitter scent of captivity, of confinement and no access to fresh air.

Moon set Merit on his feet and the mentor grabbed Bramble in relief, and wrapped an arm around Delin to pull him into the embrace. The corridor behind them was dark; Stone must have been ripping the liquid lights out of the walls as he went along. Someone called in Kedaic and someone else called back, but it was muffled, at least a couple of corridors over. Stone was saying, “He’s somewhere on the level below this one, I could scent him in the draft coming from that direction. The Hians cut off that stairwell and I didn’t want to try to get past them with these two.”

“We have to get the artifact too,” Bramble said in a breathless rush. “I told Stone, it’s a weapon, a bad one, worse than anything we thought—”

“Do you know where it is?” Moon asked.

Delin said, “Vendoin has it somewhere.”

Stone asked them, “Can Vendoin use it on us?”

Bramble said, “Not yet, she doesn’t know how, she has to take it somewhere.”

That couldn’t be right. Moon said, “But she used it on the Fell at that river town.”

Bramble’s spines flicked in an urgent negative. “No, Aldoan used it and died. The others don’t know how she made it work!”

Moon hesitated. The artifact was important, but they couldn’t leave without Callumkal. Moon had no intention of telling Kalam that they had left his father behind. He told Stone, “You take them, get out of here. I’ll find Callumkal. Remember to stay away from the stern. That fire weapon can’t turn far enough over this way.”

Stone bared his teeth in frustration. “Get caught and I will come back and slap you unconscious.”

“Right, because otherwise getting caught by these people sounds so attractive,” Moon snarled.

Stone snarled back and jumped backward off the boat.

His scaled form flowed into being just in time to disappear into the haze of insect-lizards below. Moon told the others, “You’re going to have to jump.”

Delin made a faint noise in his throat, then croaked, “I see.”

Merit told Delin, “It’ll be all right, he’ll catch us.”

His voice tight, Delin added, “One of you will have to push me.”

Moon caught his arm. “Just relax, it’ll be fine.”

Below, Stone’s shape materialized out of the cloud of insects. As he turned sideways, Moon snapped, “Merit, now!”

Merit leapt off the platform. In the dark and the haze of insect movement, Moon didn’t see Stone catch him. Several long heartbeats later Stone returned for a second pass with a lighter shape clinging just below his shoulder. “Bramble, you’re next.”

“No, I should stay here with you.” Bramble’s voice was hoarse and determined. “I’ll help you find Callumkal.”

Moon hissed at her, but there was no time to argue. Watching for Stone, he said, “If you jump, I’ll give you a clutch whenever you want.”

Bramble, clearly braced for snarling and orders, blinked, distracted. “What, really?”

“Really.” As Stone appeared in the cloud of insects, Moon gave Bramble a shove. She flailed and fell. Stone caught her neatly in one hand and turned to come around for his next pass.

Delin groaned. “I am not looking forward to this.”

Just as Stone appeared below again, a scatter of wooden disks landed on the platform. Moon shoved Delin off with more force than he had originally intended. Then he crouched and flipped down to land on the lower hull just as fire washed the platform above him. The heat warmed his scales and he climbed rapidly, knowing he would blend in with the dark green moss and make a poor target.

He hadn’t seen Stone catch Delin, but Stone’s big form vanished into the insect cloud with a flip of his tail, so Moon hoped for the best.

Jade rode the wind, scouting ahead with Balm. The sun had set and it was too dark to see much ahead, and they would need to return to the wind-ship soon. At least stretching her wings and fighting the strong salt-scented wind helped keep her anxiety and irritation in check. The last thing Jade needed to do was bite a warrior’s head off.

They passed into an open valley where the ground rose up to form rocky hills, all of it shrouded in deep shadow. “We should go back,” Balm called.

Jade could feel her spines twitch impatiently. Draman had said they were close, that the two moss samples, the Hians’ and Moon and Stone’s, had been converging at a point not far ahead. Jade had hoped to find the two consorts before they found the Hians, but flying around aimlessly in the dark wasn’t going to help, even though it gave her the illusion of doing something.

She began, “Right, let’s—” then she saw the flash of light above the cliffs. She hissed in a startled breath.

Balm slipped sideways in her excitement. “There! That was a—”

“Kishan distance-light,” Jade finished as it flashed again. “Go back, warn the wind-ship! I’ll wait here.”

Balm banked to head back to the others and Jade tilted her wings to land on the rocky crag of the hill overlooking the beach. Finally, their quarry was in sight.

The Hians would be watching the starboard side of the boat, where they had last spotted Raksura, so Moon climbed down, claws sinking into the thick moss, all the way under the hull. The still-working starboard distance-light swept the cloud of insects, catching iridescent reflections off carapaces and wings, as Moon climbed up the port side.

Moon reached the deck and flattened his spines to cautiously poke his head up over the railing. He spotted movement atop a cabin roof; there were Hians up there, but they faced away from him, clearly still expecting him to appear on that side. He wasn’t sure whether they had seen Stone or not. They must be aware that their captives were escaping but there was no telling how many Raksura they thought were on the boat.

He eased over the railing and dropped to the deck, then crawled to the nearest hatch and slipped inside. This corridor ran parallel to the deck, and was for the moment empty. Stone had been cut off from the stern stairwell, so Moon went forward, this time trying to make as little noise as possible. Stone had also been hampered by having to stay in his groundling form in order to fit inside the boat, and trying to keep Bramble and Delin from being recaptured. Moon hoped for better luck.

He heard movement and stepped into the nearest door, a cabin with narrow beds and cabinets built into the walls. The footsteps ran past. Moon slipped out and made it to the next stairwell. He crouched at the foot, listening and tasting the air.

The lower corridor and the cross-corridor that branched off the stairwell were empty. Most of the Hians would be up on the decks where they expected the next attack to come from. Moon moved rapidly down the cross-corridor, looking for cabins with sealed and reinforced doors.

The moss scent was strong, especially the further toward the stern he went, nearer to the moss-driven motivator that kept the boat aloft, and Moon had to filter it out of the other scents. Stone had probably been able to find Delin because his senses were so much more acute than Moon’s, and because he knew Delin’s personal scent. Moon knew Callumkal’s, but Janderan and Janderi had skins nearly as tough and thick as scales; they didn’t sweat like soft-skinned groundlings, and it made their scent less easy to detect.

But Moon had been close enough to Delin to scent illness on his skin and clothing. He was betting Callumkal wasn’t in much better shape.

At the next intersection he caught the bitter scent of recent sickness. He followed it around to another winding corridor. As he started down it he heard movement and voices from the direction of the stern. That had to be the stairwell Stone had found guarded. Moon turned away from it first, but the scent faded. Hissing to himself in irritation he turned back and crept toward the stern. Barely ten paces from the bottom of the stairs he found a door reinforced with embedded bars. Bracing himself, Moon thought, this is going to have to be fast. And if it wasn’t Callumkal in there, Moon would lose his chance to rescue him.

Moon took hold of a bar, braced his foot against the wall, and yanked it with all his strength. Something snapped inside the door, far too loudly, and half the door came out of the wall. Moon dropped it and flung himself into the room.

Callumkal lay on a padded bench, unconscious and stinking of sickness. A Hian, either guard or nurse, had been sitting on a stool and was just now standing, scrabbling for the fire weapon lying on the floor. Moon snapped out the end of his wing to punch her in the face with the tip. As she fell back against the wall and slid to the floor, Moon snatched up the fire weapon, looped the strap over his arm, and then grabbed Callumkal.

He darted into the corridor and raced away as the Hians from the stairwell shouted the alarm. Callumkal felt like a dead weight in his arms, but there was no time to stop and see if he was breathing. Moon reached the stairwell, slung Callumkal’s limp body over one arm, pointed the fire weapon down the corridor and triggered it twice. The fire roared just as the Hians dashed out of the cross-corridor. They retreated in a mad scramble and Moon ran up the stairs.

He reached the landing and heard movement from both corridors in the junction; he was cut off from the outer door on the port side. He went the only way left, and burst out through a hatchway onto the lower bow deck. Vendoin, Bemadin, and the other Hian, Lavinat, stood on the platform just above.

There was a frozen instant where Moon stared at them and they stared at him. Then Lavinat lifted a silver and crystal shape. Moon recognized it instantly. It was the foundation builder weapon, the crystal inside its cage of metal.

He turned to go over the railing but the boat’s deck shuddered under him, and he staggered sideways. Looking down he realized the boat was barely twenty paces from the top of one of the ruin’s metal rings. The night, which had still been filled with the hum of the insect-lizards, abruptly went quiet as the whole swarm shot away down the beach. So Moon had lost his cover and he and Callumkal were probably about to die anyway, from the foundation builder weapon or the fire weapons of the Hians running across the bow deck toward him. There was no other option, and Moon would rather die in the air, so he crouched and leapt off the boat into the sea wind.

And then everything went black.