The Siren Depths

Chapter Eight

The chamber Rise led Moon to was even more impressive than he had been expecting. It was impossible to guess the size or shape of the cavernous place. Widely-spaced fern trees had been planted in the floor and, aided by mentors’ magic, grown up to spread their soft green canopies across the ceiling. The smooth gray trunks were like pillars, and water flowed through a shallow stream that had been carved into the floor, complete with floating plants. The seed nodules that grew just under the broad feathery leaves had been spelled to give off light, so the trees were actually making the light they needed to survive, an artistic touch that probably pleased the Arbora.

Even this chamber couldn’t be big enough to hold the entire court, but as Rise led the way through the trees, Moon thought it might be more than half empty. Arbora and older warriors were taking their places on rugs and furs scattered on the floor, and as they passed, Moon caught many surreptitious glances. He didn’t see Russet, Lithe, or Feather, or any other familiar faces of the Arbora who had been staying close to the consorts’ hall. He didn’t think that was a particularly good sign. He glanced at Rise, who was trying to keep her expression neutral and mostly just looked grim.

At the top of the hall, in a circle of trees meant to simulate a forest clearing, the queens and consorts were seated on rich fur rugs. “That’s Onyx and her daughter queens,” Rise spoke in an almost voiceless whisper. “Her consort Umber, and the consorts taken by the queens, and the young consorts of Onyx’s bloodline.”

Still in her winged form, Onyx was bigger and therefore older than Pearl, and if she stood up would probably be more than a head taller than Moon. Her scales were a dark copper with a red web, and her jewelry, armbands, wristbands, a belt and broad pectoral, was gold with polished red stones. All the consorts were in their groundling forms, with Umber beside Onyx, and the others lounging on the furs behind them. A few had been among the consorts who had fled from Moon in the central well, so Moon wasn’t expecting any support from that quarter. The other queens were seated further away, and two of the daughter queens sat with their consort brothers. They looked young enough that they probably hadn’t been out of the nurseries very long.

At Onyx’s gesture, Rise led Moon to a fur in front of the group, several paces away from Onyx, with a clear separation between him and the other consorts. Rise hesitated, as if hoping to stay, but Onyx tilted her head and stared her down. Rise made a faint exhalation that might be an under-the-breath hiss, and left.

Moon sat down. Umber hadn’t looked at him, and the consorts and lesser queens just cast him covert glances and quickly looked away. Onyx stared at him but said nothing. Right, that’s how it’s going to be, Moon thought, unsurprised. He let out his breath in a resigned sigh.

The chamber was fairly quiet, just a low murmur of talk from the Arbora and warriors seated outside the royal glade. A young male warrior who seemed reluctant to get too close set a plate in front of Moon, with cut pieces of yellow and red fruit and a round of dark brown flatbread. Others were eating already, so Moon took a piece of fruit. He had reached the point where he wasn’t hungry anymore, which wasn’t a good sign. He forced himself to eat, hoping by the time the meat arrived his stomach would be more cooperative. He had managed to get two pieces of fruit and a piece of bread down, when Onyx said, “So this is Malachite’s lost offspring.”

“That’s what they tell me,” Moon said, and took another bite of fruit. He realized a moment later, as the other consorts stared, that he hadn’t been expected to answer. Well, it was too late now, and it wasn’t as if anything he said or did here was going to change their opinion of him.

Onyx didn’t register surprise, but he could sense her interest sharpen. “And you lived feral in the forest for forty turns.”

“No.” Moon deliberately chewed and swallowed the fruit, though it went down like a piece of rock. “I lived feral in a lot of places for forty turns.”

He could tell the consorts and other queens were listening avidly, though most affected attitudes of boredom with varying degrees of success. Onyx said, “With groundlings.”

“Sometimes.” He licked the juice off his fingers, and added, “When they’d have me.”

Onyx’s spines trembled. Moon suspected his self-possession was annoying to her. She wanted him off-balance and diffident, she wanted him to attempt to ingratiate himself; she wanted something from him that she wasn’t getting. Then she asked, “In their beds?” Her smooth voice held a combination of idle curiosity and contempt.

The consorts who were pretending not to listen slid sideways looks at him. The closest warriors and Arbora had gone silent.

Moon felt a wave of heat pass over him. No one at Indigo Cloud had ever asked that question, not Jade, not Chime. Not even Stone, though he had to know the answer already, since he knew Moon had been living with a groundling woman. Moon had thought it didn’t matter to the Raksura. Another thing you got wrong. He said, “That’s none of your concern.”

Onyx tilted her head, and there was a long fraught pause. “Your manners leave something to be desired.”

That was like a Tath calling a Ghobin ugly. Managing to sound as if he was really curious, Moon said, “Isn’t that usually considered the fault of the birthcourt? Mine abandoned me and four Arbora children to die in the forest, so maybe they aren’t the best example.”

The silence spread through the big room. Onyx sat up, spines flicking. Her voice hardened as she said, “And your former queen at Indigo Cloud provided no instruction?”

Of course Onyx knew exactly where to strike back. “She didn’t have much time for it. There was a Fell attack to fight off.”

Onyx went still, and there was an uncomfortable stir among the consorts and sister queens. Moon had been hoping to work his way back to another reference to abandoning children, since that had worked so well the first time, but it seemed he had touched a different nerve. Were they that tense about a reference to the Fell attack that had happened more than forty turns ago, at an eastern daughter colony where Onyx and these other young queens and consorts hadn’t even been present? That couldn’t be it.

Probing the sensitive spot, Moon said, “She could have abandoned the court to the Fell, but she didn’t.” There was an indrawn breath, a deeper silence from the listeners surrounding them. “That’s not a choice every queen would make—”

Onyx leapt to her feet and crossed the few paces between them in one bound, spines flared, furious. Moon fell back, half sprawled on the fur and scrabbled backward. His panicked attempt to shift was squelched as firmly as if he had been born a groundling. He snarled up at Onyx; if he was going to die or get a beating in front of half the court he wanted to at least go out fighting. Then Onyx froze.

Something had perceptibly changed in the room’s atmosphere. Onyx twitched and hissed, then whipped around to face another queen who stood only a few paces away.

She was the same size and build as Onyx, but where Onyx was copper and red, she was a green so dark it was almost black. For a moment Moon thought the contrasting web pattern across her scales was a light gray, then realized it was scar tissue, spidering across her scales and obscuring the colors. She wore no jewelry except for silver and crystal sheaths on her claws. She was too old, too big for a sister queen. This had to be Malachite.

She said, “You go too far.” Her voice was calm, colorless. Her spines didn’t even tremble, but every Raksura in the chamber seemed to shrink.

Moon thought she was talking to him. But Onyx stepped back and made an obvious effort to drop her spines. She said, “Perhaps I did. Your offspring is as provoking as you are.”

Deliberately, Malachite looked around the chamber. She might have been taking note of who was there, or trying to decide if she wanted to tear Onyx apart now or wait until later. Moon tried to shift, hoping Onyx had forgotten about him. If she had, Malachite hadn’t; he might as well have tried to turn himself into a grasseater or a major kethel.

Then Malachite reached down, grabbed Moon’s arm, and effortlessly pulled him to his feet. He choked back a frightened yelp; he would have screamed for help but no one here would lift a claw for him and that would just be insult piled on top of injury.

She let go of his arm and Moon wrenched away and made it exactly one pace before she caught him around the waist. Then she leapt upward.

Smothered against her shoulder, Moon couldn’t see where they were going. He felt fern tree fronds brush his back as she jumped up through the tree canopy. A jolt as she caught hold of some projection on the ceiling above it, then a sideways twist and dimmer light, the sense of a smaller space, as she went through an opening into a passage. Moon went limp, the only thing he could do, hoping if she dropped him he would have a chance to bolt.

She took two more turns, moving up, then down a fairly straight passage that led into a larger space. Moon’s inborn sense of direction told him where they were going. Back toward the consorts’ bowers, but higher up. Then she stopped abruptly.

She let him go and Moon, still limp, collapsed. As he hit the floor, he contracted his body, rolled away from her and came to his feet in one motion.

He crouched, braced to bolt in any direction, to the nearest exit or potential weapon. But she leapt up and away from him. She landed on an open balcony high in the wall and perched there.

Moon stepped back, wary, certain he was about to be assaulted somehow. This chamber was large and round, shadowy in its upper reaches, its walls twisted into a great spiral that seemed to stretch up some distance through the trunk. The spell-lights were polished white stones set into the wood, but only a few were lit, and it made the wall carvings blurred and indistinct. The doorways on this level and the open balconies above were just dark holes. He tried to shift again but it was no use. He was shivering from reaction, the chill of the fight-or-flight reflex that he couldn’t obey running unused through his veins.

Then he sensed movement behind him and spun around.

From somewhere above, a younger queen dropped down to land lightly on the floor. She was only a little taller than Moon, with green scales webbed with bronze. She started toward him and Moon jerked back with a warning hiss.

She held up her hands, claws retracted, palms out. “I’m your clutchmate, Celadon.”

Moon just stared at her. He hadn’t believed she existed. He hadn’t thought Lithe and Feather were lying, he just…hadn’t believed she really existed.

She moved toward him again and he fell back another step. She stopped, uncertain. “You don’t remember me.”

It took him a moment to realize he needed to answer her. “No.”

“I remember you. Not in much detail. Just flashes, images, your scent.” Celadon hesitated, her brow furrowed in concern. “Are you all right?”

That was a pointless question. Moon shook his head, exasperated, and looked up at Malachite. She was still on the balcony, looming over them. “What was that about?”

Celadon threw a dark glance upward. “That’s a good question.”

Malachite’s tail twitched. From the intensity of her dark green gaze, Moon suspected that was her equivalent of a lash of rage. She said, “Onyx knew better than to expose him to the court without my permission.”

“When were you planning to give permission?” Moon demanded. He was furious, he was frightened, he wasn’t sure why he wanted to provoke such an obviously dangerous queen, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. “How long did you mean to keep me in an empty consorts’ hall?”

Malachite, oddly enough, just looked away. Celadon’s expression softened. She said, “She was waiting for me. She’s afraid.”

“Afraid?” Of me? Moon thought, bewildered. It couldn’t be any physical fear; Malachite was the most intimidating queen he had ever seen, including Ice of Emerald Twilight and Pearl. He could see how she might be afraid of him contaminating the other consorts, yes. But he didn’t see why or how that could make Malachite afraid to confront him. It certainly hadn’t bothered Onyx.

Malachite still wouldn’t look at him. Slowly, reluctantly, Celadon said, “There is something we need to tell you. To explain to you. I don’t know if—”

Rustling sounded from a passage on the far side of the room and a warrior bounded in, then halted and shifted to groundling when he saw Malachite and Celadon. He was an older male, worried and breathing hard from what must have been a very rapid journey through the colony. “I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to be disturbed. But there’s a line-grandfather at the colony’s entrance. A huge line-grandfather.”

It was possible that Moon’s heart actually stopped for a moment.

“A line-grandfather?” Celadon said. She threw a startled glance at Moon. “From where?”

“Indigo Cloud.” The warrior eyed Moon warily. “He says we have something that belongs to him, and if we don’t let him in, he’ll tear the place apart.”

Moon’s head swam and he suddenly found himself sitting on the floor, bracing himself to stay upright. The polished wood felt oddly warm under his hands, as if his body was way too cold. Celadon knelt in front of him and tried to peer into his face without touching him. “What’s wrong?”

He tried to say, “Nothing,” but he couldn’t even croak the word out. There was a commotion around him, he felt sick, then decided that maybe lying down flat was a better idea after all. After that, everything went black.

Moon came swimming up through darkness to realize someone was patting his face, gently enough but with a discernibly restrained violence, as if whoever it was would rather be slapping him. He was lying down, his head pillowed on someone’s boney thigh, surrounded by Stone’s scent. Stone was saying, “Moon, when did you last eat?”

“Um,” Moon managed to reply. His voice sounded dry and thick. “I don’t…”

“Idiot.” Stone got an arm under his shoulders and pulled him up to a sitting position, held him there when Moon nearly fell over forward. “Hand me that.”

“Hand you what?” Moon rasped, then someone else handed Stone a cup. Stone tasted it, grimaced, then pushed it into Moon’s hands and said, “Drink that.”

Moon took a sip, knowing Stone would pour it down his throat otherwise. It was warm, unpleasantly milky, and very dense. He made a noise of disgust. Stone growled. “Drink. It.”

Moon made himself take a few swallows. It was horrible, but it stayed down and it cleared his head. He blinked, realized that he was leaning against Stone, and that Celadon and Lithe the mentor crouched near them, watching with concern. Past them, Malachite paced the floor, tail sweeping back and forth, a dark presence.

“That should hold him until he can get some real food down,” Lithe said, sounding contrite. She was holding a blue stoneware jug, and from the unpleasant odor rising from it, it was the source of the drink in the cup. “I didn’t realize he wasn’t eating.”

“Because he’s an idiot,” Stone insisted.

Stone looked exactly the same as the last time Moon had seen him, when he had left with the others to take the Valendera and the Indala back to Niran’s family. Moon was so glad to see him he could throw his head back and howl. “I was trying to eat. I kept getting interrupted.” He tried to set the cup down and Stone handed it back to him. Moon took another swallow and winced. “I’ve gone longer than that without eating.”

“But you were upset,” Lithe said. “I’m sorry, I should have seen it.”

Moon had been upset and starving before, too. But maybe not this upset, not for a long time. “What happened?” he asked Stone. “Where is she?”

Stone didn’t have to ask who he meant. He said, “There was an accident. Everyone’s fine, but she was delayed. I’ll tell you later.” He looked at Malachite, his one-eyed gaze hard. “We could do this the easy way. Just let me take him back to his queen and we’ll pretend this never happened.”

Moon was beginning to understand that Stone seemed to take a very different view of Opal Night’s claim on him than Tempest, Zephyr, Pearl, or Jade.

Malachite paused to regard Stone, her dark green eyes opaque. She said, “Your queen had no right to take him.”

Stone showed his teeth. “That might be true. But if we do it the easy way, then we don’t have to talk to other courts about your little problem.”

Malachite went still, though it was the stillness of a predator about to strike. Celadon’s expression twisted between resignation and anger. Lithe gasped and almost dropped the jug.

Malachite said, quietly, with menace, “How do you know about that?”

“I can smell it,” Stone said, holding her gaze. “It’s faint, but it’s there.”

Moon rubbed the haze out of his eyes, and looked hard at Stone’s expression. “Smell what?”

One of Malachite’s spines flicked. She said, “Fell. He scents Fell.”

Fell. At Stone’s advanced age, his senses were far more acute than any other Raksura’s, even a queen’s. He had detected the past taint of Fell at the old Indigo Cloud colony, and known they were present some distance from the destroyed Sky Copper colony. Moon thought, Fell here? After what happened to this court? So many deaths? The Arbora would go crazy. Unless…The Fell had done to Opal Night what they had tried to do to Indigo Cloud, Feather had admitted as much. And she said Malachite rescued the survivors. Maybe she rescued all of them. Moon looked up at Malachite. “Fell crossbreeds. The Fell forced the captives from the eastern colony to breed with them, but you took the children and brought them back here.”

Stone lifted his brows. “How long ago was this?”

“Forty or so turns,” Moon said. Malachite hadn’t reacted. He looked at Celadon. “They’d be a little younger than you and me.”

Celadon threw one last frustrated glance up at Malachite, then said, “Yes. That’s what happened. We have one consort and several Arbora who are half Fell. There were others, but they died as infants.” She lifted her spines in a resigned shrug. “That’s what they wanted me to explain to you. I was hoping to work up to it a little more gently.”

That explained why there were two consorts’ halls, and why the consorts of Malachite’s bloodline had been moved out of the one Moon was staying in. There was at least one consort that no one had wanted Moon to see. He asked, “Is that why Onyx got so angry when I mentioned the Fell?” Except that didn’t make sense. Onyx’s bloodline had never been in the east, so presumably the crossbreeds were only distantly related to her.

“In a way,” Celadon said. “When Malachite and the others returned from the east, Onyx was reigning queen here. She didn’t want the half-Fell children in the court. So Malachite fought her and became reigning queen. She must have assumed you knew and were taunting her.”

Moon noticed Lithe was looking down at her feet, her face drawn into a wince, as if she anticipated something terrible. Her toes were dirt-smudged, showing she had been out in the gardens again. And Moon realized he hadn’t seen her shifted form.

Moon looked, really looked, at Lithe’s profile, but couldn’t see a hint of anything but Arbora. He said, “Lithe. You’re half-Fell?”

She took a deep breath, and rubbed her face. “Yes. You can see it when I shift. So…I don’t shift unless I have to.” She looked up at Stone, bleak and resigned. “You could tell? Is that why you tasted the simple I made for Moon?”

“I tasted the simple because I don’t trust any of you people,” Stone told her. “I could tell something Fell was or had been in this room, but I hadn’t narrowed it down to you yet.”

“And what are you going to do?” Malachite asked Stone.

“I’m taking him and leaving.” Stone took Moon by the shoulders and set him aside, then pushed to his feet. He was a head shorter than Malachite, but he suddenly seemed to be taking up far more space in the room. “We took a consort of your bloodline without permission; you’re hiding Fell crossbreeds in your court. I’d say we’re even.”

Malachite’s tail twitched. “You may leave whenever you like. He is staying.”

Stone cocked his head, eyes narrowed.

Celadon stood. “But I’ve just met him! All this time, we thought he was dead; you can’t just take him away again, not so soon. Most of the Arbora and warriors haven’t even seen him yet.”

Moon thought that appeal might be more effective on Stone than any threat Malachite could come up with. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked, looking from Celadon to Malachite.

Celadon said, “Because you belong to us.” She glared at Stone. “They had no right to take you.”

Stone was unmoved. “Your bloodline gave up its claim on him turns ago.”

Malachite said, “I never gave up my claim.” For the first time, she met Moon’s eyes. Moon’s breath caught in his throat. It was a reigning queen’s power to touch some inner part of you, to draw it out and connect it to the rest of the court. It was part of how queens could keep other Raksura from shifting. Moon felt like Malachite had just pulled his heart right out of his body.

As if oblivious to what she had just done to him, Malachite said, “And it’s fitting that he be here now.”

Moon wrenched his gaze away and stared at the floor, trying to fight that pull.

It was Stone who said, “Why now?”

Malachite paced away. “When we reached the safety of this colony again, our mentors spent turns trying to understand what had happened to us, why the Fell had tried to make crossbreeds. They searched our histories, went to other courts to search their libraries, always careful never to speak of what had happened to us, but they never found any sign that the Fell had done anything like this before. They scryed for answers, but discovered nothing.” Malachite lifted her head. “But within the past turn, the scrying told us that another Fell flight was coming here, and that that flight would hold the answer.”

“Here?” Moon said, appalled. “To the Reaches?” It can’t be happening again.

Stone hissed in disbelief. “Fell haven’t come here for two hundred turns. They remember what happened the last time.”

“The Reaches were overpopulated then,” Malachite said. “Perhaps they wish to test us again.”

Lithe cleared her throat, and said hesitantly, “I can feel the flight out there, getting closer. It came down from the southwest.”

“You can hear the Fell?” Moon asked Lithe. He wondered what other abilities she had. The crossbreed mentor-dakti from the Fell flight who had attacked Indigo Cloud had had unusual powers of divination, much stronger than a normal mentor.

“No.” She shuddered. “But I know where they are. I’ve always known.” From her expression, it was more burden than asset. “The others—the other crossbreeds—don’t sense them like I do.”

Stone folded his arms. He still looked like he thought he was talking to crazy people, but he was intrigued, too. “So what are you planning to do about this?”

Celadon told him, “There’s a groundling city a day of warrior’s flight away from here. We think the Fell will attack there first.” She turned to Moon. “That’s where I was when you arrived. I’ve been trying to persuade them of the danger.”

Moon stared. “Persuade them of the danger? What does that mean? Did you tell them Fell were coming?”

Celadon hissed. “Of course I did. But they’ve never heard of Fell before. They don’t believe me.”

“They don’t believe you? So you just left, let a whole city full of groundlings with the Fell about to feed on them and no idea—” He took a step forward and a wave of dizziness hit. He swayed, and Stone caught his arm to steady him.

Malachite said, “That’s enough.”

Moon and Stone ended up back in Moon’s bower in the empty consorts’ hall.

It was past sunset and the window into the hall was dark, the bower lit only by the spelled stones set into the carving. The Arbora had brought food and then scattered because Stone was intimidating, especially when he was irritated, and Moon’s mood wasn’t much better. Stone had made Moon eat before he let him talk anymore, and Moon had choked down the plates of raw meat without tasting any of it. Fell crossbreeds raised as Raksura, auguries, it was all too much to make sense of in one night. And the worse part, that the Fell were heading toward a completely unprepared groundling city. That thought brought vivid images of Saraseil to mind, the dakti hunting helpless groundlings through the streets, the kethel tunneling through the walls of stone buildings after the inhabitants who had tried to take shelter there. The fire, the gutted bodies. Fell attacks on cities were worse than on camps or small settlements. The groundlings were so often trapped in their own homes, with their defenses against other predators or groundling tribes useless against the Fell.

“There, I ate it,” he said finally, shoving the last empty plate away. The meat sat in his stomach like a rock. “Are you happy?”

“Do I look happy?” Stone paced on the far side of the bowl hearth. “I turn my back for two heartbeats and the court falls apart. All that trouble to get us back to our home colony and then this happens, you miserable, ungrateful children. I should never have bred in the first place.”

This had been a recurring theme since leaving Malachite and the others in the queens’ hall. Moon was right: Stone’s view of Opal Night’s request for Moon’s return was radically different than anyone else’s. Stone seemed to think that Indigo Cloud had had the option of simply refusing and had only given in out of some desire to personally irritate him. Moon had earlier pointed out that he had suggested simply refusing and the others had said it was impossible, but by this point he had given up trying to argue rationally. He just said, “I’m not related to you.”

“And I should have known your whole bloodline would be crazy.” Stone stopped and glared down at Moon. “Did any other queen touch you?”

“Sort of.” At Stone’s expression, he explained, “Tempest hit me in the face. But I threw a kettle at her and made a joke about her dead sister, so I was asking for it.”

“That’s all right.” Stone resumed pacing. “But don’t tell Jade. We’ve got enough to worry about.”

“She’s really coming?”

“Of course she’s coming—” Stone stopped pacing again, frowning. “You didn’t think she was.”

Moon looked down at the hearth. His throat went tight. “We had to stop when one of the warriors was hurt, and we were three days late. Jade said she’d start the day after we left, and when she wasn’t here when we arrived…” He was still having trouble believing this was really happening. He had been trying to make himself accept the fact that he had been discarded again, that he would never see anyone from Indigo Cloud, and then Stone had walked in and the world had changed. Not very different from how the world had changed when Stone had first found him with the Cordans in the eastern jungle.

Stone sat on his heels so they were closer to eye level. “Why did you think she wasn’t coming?”

“I told you, she wasn’t here.” That didn’t really answer Stone’s question, but then Moon couldn’t answer it. Not in any way that made sense to anyone other than him. “And she had Ember.”

Stone looked honestly baffled. “Who?”

“The consort Emerald Twilight gave her to replace me!”

“Oh, the kid.” Stone dismissed Ember with a wave of his hand. “He’s your problem. I’ve raised enough kids, I’m not doing another one.”

Moon sat there a moment, too floored to respond. He shook his head impatiently, trying to get his scattered thoughts together. “You said there was an accident but no one was hurt. What happened? Was it another platform collapse?”

Stone’s sharp gaze didn’t waver, for long enough that Moon started to feel like prey and had to fight the urge to growl. Then Stone finally relented and said, “No, it was a hunting accident.”

Relief made Moon break out into a sweat, then he realized what Stone had said. “A hunting accident?”

“Two young hunters went exploring on one of the platforms a couple of trees away and walked right into a hibernating predator.” Stone absently scratched the back of his neck. “We used to call them ‘snatchers.’ They look like snakes, but with long arms. Not much scent, and don’t make a lot of noise when they move. This one wasn’t moving until the idiots woke it up. Fortunately the warrior patrol heard them and held it off until Jade got there.” He added, as if it was an unimportant detail, “Bone said it was a good forty paces long.”

“Forty paces? But what—” Moon had the feeling Stone was leaving something out. “Why did that keep her from leaving? Did she think there were more?”

“She killed it, but she broke her right arm and cut up her shoulder.”

Moon shoved to his feet. “You said no one was hurt!”

“I didn’t want to tell you in front of them.” Stone jerked his head toward the doorway. “I preferred your crazy bloodline thinking I had a queen on her way to back me up.”

It was Moon’s turn to pace, to fight the nervous urge to bust out of here and head back to Indigo Cloud immediately. “I should have been there.”

“That was actually my point,” Stone said, his voice dry.

Moon ignored that. “She can’t fly? For how long?”

“Getting the break knocked her out and she went into her Arbora form. Heart was afraid if she shifted before she healed, it would translate to wing damage. From the time we got back to the colony…” Stone looked thoughtful. “She should be almost healed up by now. If I can get your damn birthqueen to let us leave in the morning, we can probably meet her on the way, before she gets too far.”

Moon stopped, staring at one of the wall carvings without seeing it. Leave in the morning, go back to Indigo Cloud, go home. If someone had said that to him yesterday, if he had thought there was any real chance of it, he would have sprung at it like a starving predator at fresh meat.

And Jade hadn’t lied about coming after him. None of this changed the fact that Moon hadn’t produced a clutch yet, but maybe with Ember there now, Moon’s shortcoming in that area didn’t matter as much. Whatever it was, the smart thing to do was to get back to Indigo Cloud as soon as possible, and work on becoming so entrenched there that getting rid of him would be far more difficult.

But he couldn’t. He said, “I can’t go back. Not yet.”

Stone said, ominously, “What?”

Moon faced him. “There’s a Fell flight heading for a groundling city. A groundling city so unprepared they won’t even know to run away until it’s too late. And it’s only a day’s flight from the outskirts of the Reaches. We just can’t ignore it.” He couldn’t believe Stone didn’t see that.

Stone growled under his breath. “I know, I know. I just don’t want Indigo Cloud involved with it.”

So Stone did see it. “What, were you going to take me to Jade and then turn around and come back here?”

“I was considering it,” he admitted. “If one Fell flight succeeds here, the others will follow. We’ll have to deal with them sooner or later.”

He was right, and the thought made Moon’s insides cold. “So we should stay and help.”

Stone pushed to his feet and stepped close, and made his words an emphatic order. “I want you out of this, and I don’t want Jade anywhere near it.”

“Why? We’ve both killed rulers. And Jade—”

“You idiot. This flight is probably coming here because it wants to make crossbreed Raksura.” Stone hissed. “A few ruler-queens like Ranea would make it easier for the Fell to take on the Reaches again.”

Moon turned away, sudden tension making his back teeth ache. More reason to make sure this flight was destroyed utterly. He muttered, “Stop calling me an idiot.”

“Stop acting like one,” Stone said, but without much heat.

Moon leaned his shoulder against the wall, making himself think with his head and not his claws. “Maybe this flight is related to the one that came after Indigo Cloud.” The flight which had destroyed the groundling city of Saraseil, who had used their cross-breed mentor-dakti to track Moon across time, to predict that he would one day go to Indigo Cloud. Maybe one of the mentor-dakti escaped and predicted I’d come here. The thought didn’t help his still queasy stomach.

“Maybe.” Stone stepped to the hearth and took a seat on the fur mat. He grimaced as he settled into place, rubbing his lower back. “You can tell Malachite to ask one of the rulers when she’s ripping his guts out.”

Moon went to sit down on the furs, suddenly aware of how exhausted he was; he didn’t think he would be able to stay awake much longer. Stone looked weary too, and a little more gray than usual in the spell-light. Moon asked, “Why did it take you so long to get back to Indigo Cloud? Did the Arbora want to stop a lot?” It wasn’t fun being carried for long periods of time, and Blossom and the few other Arbora who had helped Niran sail the flying ships were adventurous types. Moon had figured they would have made Stone and the other warriors land frequently so they could sightsee.

“Not exactly. We had company on the way back.”

“Company?” Then Moon remembered who else was an adventurous type, who had been cheated out of his trip to see a Raksuran colony by a Fell attack. And who might find a trip to see the Reaches, the fabled homeland of the Raksura, irresistible. “Delin?”

“He gave the Arbora a ride back in another flying boat.” Stone let his breath out, sounding tired and annoyed.

Moon wanted to see Delin again, and had just assumed that would never happen. But then he had also assumed he would never see Stone again. He was suddenly too tired, too overwhelmed to think about it a moment more. He pulled another fur around and lay down on it, saying, “We’ll decide what to do in the morning.”

Stone made a noise that combined a snort of derision and a growl. But after a moment, he moved around and lay down next to Moon.