The Harbors of the Sun

CHAPTER TWENTY

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 climbed down inside the narrowing shaft, tasting the air for any sign of the Hians. The ledges continued to wind down the sides, but the interior walls were embossed with flowing wave-like designs, that vanished into the darkness as sunlight from above faded. Dim blue illumination, part of the flowing pattern along the walls, provided just enough light to see. It reflected off slender curving pillars that supported the interior. If they aren’t too far ahead of us, she thought, we can—

A sudden jolt knocked Jade into the nearest pillar. She snapped her wings in by instinct and caught herself, her claws scraping across the silvery stone. She lifted her head to see Balm hurtling toward her. Jade let go of the pillar and caught her. The force of it slammed them backwards.

But Jade had control of their fall now and landed them both on the curve of a lower pillar. She gripped it with her foot claws, supporting Balm, and looked frantically for the others.

She spotted Stone first, his tail and one set of foot claws wrapped around a pillar on the opposite side of the shaft. He had Briar in one hand and Merit in the other. Above him, Saffron perched next to River, who had Deft under one arm. Jade didn’t see anyone else. And something had cut off the light from the top of the shaft. She hissed in terror, then tightened her spines down. Panic wasn’t an option.

Balm clamped onto the pillar with her claws and gasped, “I’m all right.” She shook her spines out as Jade carefully released her. “Are we moving?”

“Yes.” The whole shaft, maybe the whole structure, was rotating, Jade felt it in her gut and the back of her head. She called up to River and Saffron, “Where are Moon and the others?”

River said, “They were above us.” He turned and craned his neck to look up. “I think they were still near the top.”

The constriction in Jade’s chest eased a little. She said, “Saffron, can you get up there and see if the shaft is blocked?”

Saffron’s spines signaled assent as she swung past River and started to climb.

None of the others seemed hurt. River set Deft on the pillar next to him, keeping a hand on his arm as the dazed warrior recovered. Stone curled around the pillar to set Briar on a perch. Merit climbed up his shoulder to hop over and sit next to her. Then Stone flowed up the pillar, following Saffron.

Jade watched him go, every nerve tight.

“You think the Hians did this, made it start moving?” Balm hooked her claws on their perch and leaned out to look down.

With effort, Jade made her voice sound even and ordinary. “They must have. This wasn’t a coincidence.” Below the shaft narrowed again, the pillars twisting towards each other, forming more of a climbing structure. The Hians had to be using their flying packs, which meant they had been able to move down through here almost as quickly as Raksura could.

Balm hissed in realization. “Delin said the Hians had magic that could make rock move. These walls don’t feel like stone, but—”

Jade wanted to groan aloud and managed not to. “They caused this, they know we’re here.”

From above, Saffron called down, “Part of the wall came off, and it’s wedged into the narrow part of the shaft. There’s a lot of broken pieces around it. The line-grandfather is trying to push it free.” A clanking noise echoed from above and a scatter of debris rained down. Saffron spread her wings and dropped to a pillar closer to Jade and Balm so she could lower her voice. “I didn’t see or scent anyone. There’s no sign anyone was in there when it happened.”

Meaning she hadn’t seen or scented any sign of blood or smashed bodies. Jade took a full breath to calm her pounding heart and moved her spines in acknowledgement. Moon wasn’t crushed in the wall collapse, and Chime, Shade, and Lithe were with him. If there was any group of Raksura who could take care of themselves in a strange situation, it was them.

Balm stretched to look up, twitching back as more debris clattered down into the pillar. “Maybe we could use the fire weapons, but—Do we have time?”

“We could split up,” River contributed from above. “Some of us stay here and try to dig out . . .”

Jade flexed her claws as she considered it. We could already be too late. The Hians were somewhere below them about to use the weapon. And they already know we’re here. “We have to go on. Stone!”

After a couple of thumps and more debris, Stone dropped out of the shaft, caught the pillar above Briar’s perch, and wrapped himself around it. He shifted to his groundling form and said, “I can’t get through, not in a hurry.”

Jade twitched her spines in acknowledgement. “We’ll find another way out, once we stop the Hians. Briar, Deft, can you fly?”

Deft said, “Yes, queen, I’m all right,” and unfurled his wings to prove it.

“Yes, Jade.” Briar spread her wings cautiously, then picked up Merit.

“Then come on,” Jade said, and dropped down the shaft.

Chime jolted forward and Moon grabbed a flailing arm to pull him back to their perch. The wheel shuddered like the whole ship was about to come apart.

Moon pulled himself to the upper rim. From there he had a view past the sail. As the whole docking structure turned, dragging the ship with it, clouds formed overhead. Below the water and ice chunks swirled into a vortex. He thought of the whirlpool that had pulled the sunsailer out of the foundation builder city. “This could be bad,” he said.

“You think?” Chime gasped, then levered himself up a little to look. “Oh. Oh no, not again! No, wait.” He hesitated, just as Moon felt the change in altitude in his stomach and the back of his neck. “We’re moving down!”

From below, Lithe said, “This has to be the weapon. It’s doing this!”

“We’re not dead yet,” Shade pointed out. “We still have time.” The wheel jerked again and he added, “Maybe.”

Kethel climbed up the wheel but stopped several paces below Lithe and Shade. Moon didn’t think it was his imagination that it looked anxious.

I need to see what’s happening below us, Moon thought. He let go of the wheel and stood up, clamping his foot claws to hold on. The wind gusted hard and he swayed with the motion but from this angle he could see the docking structure had moved down, pulling the ship with it. Below, the gray water churned, but there was something beneath it, something blue.

Sky blue, he thought, and caught a glimpse of brown and gold. Grass, a grass plain. A groundling might not have been able to see it, but Raksuran eyes identified it as a grass plain, seen from a great height. “It’s a passage!” A massive jolt went through the ship and metal groaned, the wind rose to a shriek. The wheel shuddered again and Chime grabbed Moon’s leg as he swayed. “It’s a passage through the air.” Moon dropped to a crouch to steady himself. “It’s making an opening to someplace else, someplace below us, maybe so the Hians can use the weapon.” That had to be it.

Chime’s spines flicked in consternation. “That makes sense, sort of. Bramble said that they might need to be up high for the weapon to reach all the way out to the east. Like if you drop a rock from a height the—”

“I got it,” Moon said. He just didn’t know what to do about it. Something the Hians had done below was making the ship open a magical passage in the air. And if Jade and the others were dead down in the shaft, or trapped there . . .

Then Shade said, “We have to stop it, or—Can we move the ship? Make it drag the docks back up? Or maybe push it down to the ground, so the weapon can’t get all the way to the Reaches or Kish.”

“Yes! That might work.” Chime steadied himself on Moon’s arm and lifted up to a tentative crouch. “We need to find a steering cabin.”

Moon gripped Chime’s hand, anchoring him so Chime could stand. He tightened his hold on the rim and Chime as the ship jolted again and the wind pushed at them.

Shade had eased to his feet, trying to see. Then Lithe climbed down toward Kethel, ordering it, “Lift me up!”

Moon yelled, “Lithe, don’t—” Shade snarled, “Lithe, no—”

Lithe yelled, “Quiet, both of you!” Kethel swung up toward her, clambered atop the wheel, and clamped on with its foot claws and tail. It closed one hand carefully around Lithe and lifted her up.

Chime dropped back beside Moon, and said, “She has to—I couldn’t see anything.” He added nervously, “I’m just glad I didn’t think of it first.”

Moon was too busy wrestling with his instinctive urge to go rip the kethel’s eyes out. Shade’s low frustrated growls said he felt the same.

Lithe scrambled up atop Kethel’s hand as high as she could. The wind made her frills flare out. Both she and the kethel swayed as the ship spun even faster. They leaned far to one side and Chime made a faint squeak of alarm.

Lithe twisted around to look toward the other end of the ship and squinted against the wind, her face a grimace of effort. Then she dropped back into Kethel’s hand. It lowered her to the wheel and opened its fingers so she could climb out. She pointed toward the far end of the ship. “I saw a raised chamber that way. It’s the only thing that looks like a steering cabin!”

The people who had built this thing might be sightless and steer it from somewhere deep in the hold, they had no idea. But this was worth a try. Moon said, “Shade, you take Lithe; we’ll follow you.”

Shade swept Lithe up and crouched, then made a leap down to the next wheel. Shade had to partially extend his wings to make it, and slipped sideways on a harsh gust of wind with an easy competence. Moon glanced at Chime to make sure he was all right. Chime moved his spines in assent, and said grimly, “I can do it.”

Moon dove after Shade. He landed on the next wheel and looked back. Chime fought the wind awkwardly through the leap but landed next to Moon with spines flared in tension. Kethel followed, swinging easily down.

After more jumps made dangerous with the increasing wind and motion, they reached the lee of the next giant metal sail. Moon spotted the big globe that Lithe had identified as a possible steering cabin. It sat just atop the center of a cone-shaped web of heavy metal cables and struts, and the light caught glints off large curving crystal windows. Moon felt a spark of hope. It looked as if it was connected to a large part of the ship, reminding him of the connecting tendrils of a Kishan water boat’s motivator. Lithe was right, this might be it.

Shade reached it first and landed on the rounded top of the globe. Moon hit the side and slid down to hook his claws on top of a wide window. He pressed his face against it, trying to see in, but the interior was heavily shadowed. Chime landed on the side and scrabbled for a hold on the big cable just below the curve. He called, “Hey, I think this is the door!”

Moon pushed off from the window and dropped down to the cable. It was made of braided skeins of metal, jointed like armor, and attached to a conical base beneath the globe. Clinging to his cable, Chime pointed. Below was an elaborately twisted piece of metal that Moon realized was a staircase, very like the one inside the flower pods at the first ruin. He swung down to it, landed on a step, and saw the stairs led to a round doorway in the base of the globe. The stairs blocked the wind a little, and must be firmly anchored; Moon couldn’t feel the movement of the ship nearly as much.

Moon retracted his claws to run his hands over the door’s surface. “There’s no lock.” He dropped back down to a lower stair so Lithe and Chime could examine the door more closely.

“Wait, there’s one of those forerunner flower locks here, but it’s tiny.” Chime clawed carefully at something set deep into the door frame. “Maybe we could pry it open . . .”

Lithe stepped aside. Shade dropped down and reached past Chime to put his hand on the lock. Moon craned his neck to see, but nothing happened.

Chime grimaced. “That would have been easy. We need a long metal rod—”

Then deep inside the door, something groaned. Chime twitched uneasily but Lithe said, “I think that’s metal.”

Moon snapped, “Chime, Lithe, get back from the—” and then the door opened.

Shade shoved his body in front of the opening, shielding Lithe and Chime, but nothing surged out of the door but a wave of cold stale air, scented of rust and rot.

Lithe dug in her bag and pulled out a glowing handful of Kishan moss. Shade took it and held it out as he stepped inside. “Here’s another stair. And I think we’re in the right place.”

Moon pulled himself up and slipped inside after Shade. Instantly the motion seemed to cease. This chamber was protected somehow, stable no matter what was happening to the rest of the ship. The light gleamed on the dark blue of the walls and the flowing figured shapes of curves that might symbolize wind and water. In the center another set of the oddly-spaced stairs curved up toward the globe above. Even Moon could tell this was forerunner.

The cessation of the wind and the dizzying motion made Moon shake his spines and frills out in relief, shedding ice crystals. Lithe stepped in behind him.

Then Chime twitched. “Uh, I felt something.

Heard something.” Shade stopped with his claws curled around the raised steps. He peered warily up into the chamber above. “Something dangerous?”

Moon asked, “Voices?”

Lithe touched Chime’s arm in encouragement. Chime tilted his head, concentrating. “No, just . . . There’s definitely something here.” He hissed in frustration. “I’m not sure.”

“Then we are in the right place,” Moon said. And they couldn’t stop now. He stepped onto the stairs and started up with Shade.

Moon carefully poked his head up into the next chamber. The discolored crystal windows had cracked and clouded. Only a little light shone through and the view out was barely discernible. It was oddly quiet, though Moon heard the howling wind through the open door below. The narrow sections of wall between the windows were blue and deeply figured. Moon climbed up onto a floor grooved with wave patterns, and looked for something like a steering lever, or a wheel, or anything.

Shade stood beside him, staring around, baffled, as Chime and Lithe climbed up. He said, “But there’s nothing to steer with.”

“This was built by forerunners to control this ship,” Moon said, groping for a solution, “so . . . we don’t even know how forerunners do anything.”

“There has to be something here,” Lithe said, and she started to feel the carvings. Chime hurried to help, poking at the crevices and angles.

Kethel, in its groundling form, appeared in the stairwell, startling a yelp out of Chime. Shade, crouched to search along the floor, growled but didn’t object to its presence.

After what felt like a short eternity of searching, Moon knew this wasn’t going to help. And the others could all be dead down inside the dock somewhere and he had to find out. He shook his spines and said, “I need to go back to the dock and get down to where the others are. You all stay here.”

Chime looked up, appalled. “No, you can’t—”

Shade turned away from the wall he was searching. “You can’t make it alone. We barely got away from there alive. I’ll go with you.”

From the ripping shriek of metal outside, the ship might possibly be tearing itself apart. Moon wanted Chime, Shade, and Lithe up here where escape would be easier if the ship broke up. “No, stay with them. They need you. And you might be able to do something to help here.”

“I’ll take you there,” Kethel said. Its dark eyes were stark against its pale skin, red bruises forming on its jawline from being thrown off the docking stalk. It looked frightened and that was almost more disturbing than anything else.

Shade hissed at it, then said to Moon, “We should stay together.”

Moon flared his spines and snarled, “I don’t have time to argue.”

Shade bristled at him. Moon held his gaze and said, “The warriors and Bramble and the groundlings on the wind-ship are going to need you, and Chime, and Lithe.” If they’re still alive after Vendoin uses the weapon, he thought, and didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t need to. “You might be their only chance to get away from this place. If it gets worse, don’t wait, get back to them.”

Shade tried to stare him down. Moon had been in staring contests with queens and Stone; Shade wasn’t nearly angry enough to win. Shade flicked his spines and subsided reluctantly. He said, “If it’s too late, come back. Don’t—” He stopped.

Don’t die with the others, he meant. Just so Shade would let him go, Moon said, “I’ll try.”

Kethel dropped down the stairwell and Moon swung down to follow. Chime called out after him, sounding desperate. Moon’s throat tightened and he didn’t answer.