Moon stared, breathing hard. Then he lunged for the man’s throat. The burst of renewed fury only got him to his feet; the man stepped back out of reach and Moon collapsed to his hands and knees.
Between one heartbeat and the next, the man shifted. The great dark form crouched, spreading its wings. Moon flinched back, but it jumped into the air. Wincing against the sudden windstorm of dirt, he saw it soar out and down, vanishing over the side of the battlement.
Another shifter.
Moon swore and sat back, rubbing sweat and dirt out of his eyes. The manacle was still on his wrist, the chain dangling.
I can’t believe this.
He looked around. The tower was a ruin, cold wind tearing across it. The stone was cracked and dirt filled the chinks, weeds sprouted everywhere. He didn’t see any way down, no doorway into the structure below.
The battlement had rounded crenellations, blocking his view. He stumbled awkwardly to his feet; lingering weakness from the poison made him dizzy. Weaving from side to side, he made it to the battlement, aiming for a spot where one of the crenellations had broken and fallen away. Digging sore fingers into the crumbling rock, he dragged himself up enough to see. The tower stood on the edge of a gorge, surrounded by rock-clinging trees and vegetation, mountains rising all around. Then he looked down.
A long way down. The tower was hundreds of paces high, and though the sides were slanted, they were still far too steep to climb. If Moon had had his claws and wasn’t half dead, he could have done it. Of course, if he had his claws, he would have his wings and this wouldn’t be a problem. He tried to shift again, just in case the poison had miraculously worn off in the last few moments.
“Don’t fall.”
Moon’s lips curled into a snarl. He looked back, leaning into the wall to support himself. The shifter stood behind him. His voice a dry croak, Moon said, “You think that’s funny.”
The shifter just held out a small waterskin made of some bright blue hide. It took Moon a moment to realize the shifter expected him to drink from it. He shook his head. “That’s how I got into this.”
The shifter lifted gray brows, then shrugged. He tilted the skin back and took a drink. “It’s just water.”
Piss in your water,
Moon started to say, then realized the words weren’t coming out in Altanic or Kedaic, or in any of the other common groundling languages. They were both speaking a language Moon knew in his bones, but hadn’t heard since he was a boy. It was too strange, another shock on top of everything else. He just said, “What do you want?”
The shifter watched him, his expression opaque. His eyes were blue, but the right one was clouded and its pupil didn’t focus. “Just trying to help,” he said. The even tone of his voice gave nothing away.
Moon grimaced, unimpressed. “You tried to kill me on the sky-island.”
“I tried to catch you,” the shifter corrected pointedly. “I just wanted a closer look.” His gaze flicked over Moon, assessing.
He’s old,
Moon thought, not sure what it was about the man that gave it away. Far older than his groundling form looked. Everything about him was faded to gray, skin, hair, clothes. He wore a loose shirt with the sleeves rolled up, pants of some tougher material, a heavy leather belt with a pouch and knife sheath. The man said, “I’m Stone, of the Indigo Cloud Court.”
Moon pushed away from the battlement, still weaving on his feet. He had never heard of the place, if it was a place. “Are you going to kill me, or just leave me up here?”
“I thought neither.” Stone stepped away, turning to cross back over the roof. A heavy leather pack lay on the dirty paving, and a pile of broken branches and chunks of log. Stone must have had the pack stashed somewhere lower in the tower, and that casually spectacular shift and dive had been to retrieve it and the wood. “What did they give you?”
“They said it was a poison that only works on Fell.” Moon followed him warily. He had met other shifters before. He had run into a group in Cient that could shift into big lupine predators; they had tried to eat him, too. He had never found or heard of any shifters who could fly. Except the Fell. But Stone wasn’t Fell.
You didn’t think he was a shifter, either,
he reminded himself. “I’m not a Fell.”
Stone’s brows quirked. “I noticed.” He sat on his heels, breaking up the wood to lay a fire. He was barefoot, like Moon. “Poison for Fell? I’ve never heard of that before.”
Moon eased himself down to sit a few paces away, wincing at the tug of pain in his back and shoulder. The battlement provided a little protection from the cold wind, but the thin fabric of his sweat-soaked clothes, fine for the warmer valley, was worse than inadequate here. If Stone didn’t kill him before the poison wore off—if the poison wore off... Brows knit, Moon looked down at his arms, still showing the ghost-pattern of scales just under the bronze tint of his skin.
Oh, I get it now,
he thought sourly.
Just trying to help. Right.
“Why did they stake you out?” Stone broke up twigs for tinder. “Catch you stealing their cattle?”
Moon thought over possible replies, trying not to huddle in on himself against the wind. He could sit here and say nothing, but talking might distract Stone. He tried to answer, and had to clear his throat. “I was living with them. They found out what I was.”
Stone flicked a look at him and held out the waterskin again. The slosh of the water inside made Moon’s dry throat burn. He gave in and, without taking his eyes off Stone, took a long drink, then coughed and wiped his mouth. The lukewarm water soothed his throat a little. He tied the bone cap back on and set it aside.
Stone tried to light the fire. He shielded the tinder with larger pieces of wood, striking sparks off a set of flints, just like anyone else. Moon tried to reconcile this picture with the creature that had tossed the giant vargit into the Cordans. Frustrated curiosity getting the better of caution, he asked, “What are you?”
Stone glanced at him from under skeptical brows. “Did you get hit on the head?” Moon didn’t respond, and after a moment Stone’s expression turned thoughtful. He said, “I’m a Raksura. So are you.”
“I’m—” Moon started, then realized he had no way to finish that sentence. He had never known where he came from or what his people were called.
And he speaks the language your mother taught you.
Moon didn’t want to believe it. But if it was a ploy, it was a patently bizarre one.
He’s trying to make me think he didn’t bring me up here to kill me, or...
He had no idea. Moon settled for saying skeptically, “Then why are you so much bigger than me?”
“I’m old.” Stone frowned at him, as if Moon was the one who sounded crazy. “What court are you from? Where’s your colony?”
Moon debated a moment, weighing the tactic of implying that there were others who would come to his aid versus the possibility of being tortured to reveal their location. No, it wasn’t worth it. He admitted, “It was just my mother, and my brothers and sister. Dead, a long time ago.”
Stone winced, and turned his attention back to the fire. Once the tinder and the smaller twigs had caught, he sat back, carefully feeding in broken branches. “This happened somewhere further east? Around the curve of the gulf of Abascene?”
It had to be a guess. It was just a very good guess. “Further than that.”
“There were a few courts that went that far east. I thought they all failed and went back into the reaches, but maybe not.” Stone poked at the tinder thoughtfully. “This woman you call your mother. She was the reigning queen?”
Moon eyed him. “No,” he said, slowly, not trying to conceal his opinion that this was a crazy question. “We lived in a tree.”
Stone just looked annoyed. “What did she look like?”
Does he think he knew her?
Moon thought, incredulous. At least trying to see where this was going helped take his mind off the cold and his impending death. “Like me.” He remembered he was a groundling at the moment with a scale pattern under his skin, and clarified, “When she shifted, she was like my other... me. With wings. And she was dark brown, with red under her scales.”
Stone shook his head, leaning over to untie the pack’s laces and rummage in it. “She wasn’t your mother.”
Moon pressed his lips together to hold back his first knee-jerk response, then looked away. It was stupid to get into a pointless argument with someone who was planning to kill you.
Stone pulled out a small cooking pot, battered but embossed with figures in a lighter metal around the rim. “Flighted females with those colors are warriors, and they can’t breed. Only queens and Arbora females are fertile.” Moon’s face must have reflected extreme doubt, because Stone added with a trace of exasperation, “Don’t look at me. We’re Raksura. That’s how it works.”
Moon stared at the fire, trying to keep his expression noncommittal. He couldn’t tell if Stone really did believe that Moon was a Raksura, or if he was just trying to get his confidence. The first option made his skin creep. The second... at least made sense.
He wants you to sit here, thinking nothing’s going to happen, until the poison wears off.
Stone filled the pot from the waterskin and put it at the edge of the fire to warm. “This warrior, she didn’t say where you came from?”
“No.”
Stone’s gaze sharpened. “She didn’t tell you anything?”
Moon folded his arms and looked away. Talking had been a bad idea.
“She probably stole you.”
Moon set his jaw.
It’s not enough that he’s going to eat you; he’s got to insult your dead mother.
With more heat, Stone added, “She didn’t even tell you how to reproduce, that’s—”
That stung him to a reply. “I was a child. Reproducing wasn’t exactly a concern.”
Stone watched him a moment, then turned to rummage in his pack again. “Oh, that young.” He pulled out a leather-wrapped packet. “There were four others? Younger than you?”
Moon eyed him narrowly, not sure how Stone knew that. “Yes.”
Stone heard his unspoken question. “It was a guess. There’s usually five in a clutch. They had wings?”
“No.” Through the first long turns alone, finding places to shelter, hunting for food, trying not to become prey for something else, all Moon could think about was how much better it would have been if the others were still with him. The isolation had driven him to seek out groundling settlements—disastrously, at first. He had gotten better at that. He had thought he had gotten better at it. The events of the last day or so would suggest otherwise. He let out his breath in resignation. “Just me.”
Stone nodded. He opened the leather packet, took out a dark cake of pressed tea, and scraped off a portion into the steaming water. “Raksura without wings are called Arbora. The females are fertile, and they can give birth to both Arbora and warriors.” He shook his head, admitting, “I don’t know how that works. A mentor explained it to me once but that was turns ago and it’s complicated. But Arbora are divided up into soldiers, hunters, and teachers. They take care of the colony, raise the children, find food, guard the ground.” He shrugged. “Run the place. They’re also mentors, but you have to be born with a special talent to be a mentor.” He glanced up, meeting Moon’s eyes. “We’re Aeriat. We protect the colony.”
Moon couldn’t stop a bitter snort. “Stop saying ‘we.’”
Stone ignored that. He dug a cup out of the pack and said, “You want some of this?”
Moon stared in disbelief. He shook his head incredulously. “How stupid do you think I am?”
“What?” Stone waved the cup in exasperation. “It’s tea. You watched me make it.”
Moon had thought he could play this game, but he just couldn’t stand it. He pushed away from Stone, stumbled to his feet. “You know, I’d rather you just kill me than talk me to death.”
Stone grimaced in frustration. “If I wanted to kill you—”
“You’re just waiting until the poison wears off. If you eat me while it’s still in me, you won’t be able to shift either.”
Stone slammed the pack down, stood, and shifted.
Moon dodged back, but Stone leapt into the air, caught the wind, banked, and dove away. Moon lost sight of him and pivoted, trying to watch the sky and all sides of the tower at once.
He waited, but Stone didn’t reappear.
Warily, tension making his nerves jump, Moon searched the roof again, looking for another way down. He found what might have originally been a trap door, but the shaft was filled in with rocks and mortar, as if intentionally blocked from below. As if the original inhabitants had tried to wall themselves in. He wondered if any of them had survived, or if the tower was a giant tomb.
Finally, shoulders hunched against the cold, he went back to the fire. He fed in more wood, building it up again. Then he looked through Stone’s pack.
It contained no weapons except for a small, dull fruit-peeling knife. There was another cup with the same design as the kettle, a couple of empty waterskins, and leather packets all of which contained food. And they weren’t even staples, just dried limes, nuts, two more pressed tea cakes, and some broken pieces of sugar cane. Opening a last packet of dark leather, expecting it to be more food, Moon found a heavy bracelet of red gold. Holding it up to the light, he could see designs etched on it, a fluid image like interlinked snakes.
Moon shook his head, baffled at the collection. He wrapped the bracelet up again and tucked it back in with the rest. Whatever Stone was, he didn’t have to pretend to be a groundling; he had few useful supplies for traveling or camping on the ground. And he must be strong enough to stay in his other form for a long time.
Is that what he wanted you to see?
Stone must have known that Moon would go through the pack or he wouldn’t have left it here.
So he’s not lying about coming from some kind of shifter enclave.
He had never heard of one, but the Three Worlds was a big place. Though Moon traveled faster and further than a groundling could have, he had only seen a tiny part of it.
Moon sat back and rubbed at the manacle where it chafed his wrist. The wind gusted, scattering sparks from the fire. It was only late afternoon, but it was getting colder. Even if he managed to get away from Stone, he could only fly so far in one day, only stay in his other form so long. His oiled skin coat and hood were back at his tent in the Cordans’ camp, with everything else he owned, like the good steel hunting and skinning knives he had traded for at the Carthas forge. Not counting the things he had gotten from the Cordans, there were his flints, his waterskins, blankets, and the bow and quiver he kept for show, to explain his success at hunting. Some of it he didn’t need when he wasn’t living as a groundling. But he would have to make his way through these mountains with nothing.