Moon pulled in his disemboweling claws and sat on his heels, looking out on the view. The vines and the angle to the waterfall hid most of the central well; he could see some of the garden terraces and the edge of the reservoir below. The Arbora who had been fishing there had moved on.
His biggest problem, of course, was not the reason he had been brought to this strange court. His biggest problem was that he wasn’t thinking clearly, and the uncertainty about Jade and Indigo Cloud had driven him right out of his mind. He hadn’t been thinking clearly since Tempest and Zephyr had arrived at Indigo Cloud.
At least you know that now
. But knowing what was wrong with him didn’t cure it.
Even now, nervous energy made his skin itch. He could just leap out the window into the central well, but he wanted to see what would happen if he tried to walk out. He jumped down from the alcove and went down the stairs to the consorts’ hall.
He found it still occupied by several Arbora, who all looked up, startled at his sudden appearance. A few were sewing or making braided cords, and one had a book open on her lap, but this couldn’t be the place where they normally gathered. Russet, the Arbora who had challenged Tempest, sat near the hearth.
Moon ignored them and circled around to head toward the doorway.
Two actually jumped to their feet, and Russet said hurriedly, “Where are you going? I mean, is there something you need? We can get it for you.”
Moon stopped and looked around the room, making it deliberate. Several Arbora avoided meeting his eyes. “Am I a prisoner?”
It was unfair, since they had given him a bower with a window, but they were either too disconcerted to think of that reply or too polite to say it aloud. Some shook their heads, others murmured demurs, and Russet said, “No, of course not!”
Moon walked out, thinking for an instant they would just let him go. Then half of them, including Russet, got up and followed him.
Inwardly seething, Moon started to turn toward the inward-leading corridor.
Russet offered, “There’s a passage out to the floor of the central well. Would you like to see it?”
At least they weren’t trying to insist he stay cooped up. He nodded, and a relieved Russet led the way.
The passage took them to a downward ramp and eventually opened to an archway into the huge space of the well.
Moon walked out onto a broad platform carpeted with thick grasses and tiny purple and blue flowers. Sunlight shafted down from splits in the trunk high overhead, caught as sparkles in the spray from the waterfall. To one side, tall stone-lined steps led up to the rim of the reservoir. Moon went that way and climbed up to walk along the rim. The Arbora didn’t follow, but settled down on the grass platform and resumed their tasks.
The water was clear enough to show that the pool was stocked with shellfish, little green crabs, and big snails. Delicate, glittery insects buzzed around stands of reed, and a viny water plant with big red globes floated just below the surface.
Moon followed the rim around the pool, the smooth stone cool under his feet. There were larger rocks placed around the edge, for sitting and landing, scarred by turns and turns of claws. On the far side he had a good view of the lower part of the hall, which had broader terraces with more gardens. Several Arbora moved along them, weeding or checking on the progress of their plantings. On the platform not far below the lake were fern trees with long broad fronds, the kind that grew nuts that could be ground up to make a spice.
There were people down there too, but not Arbora. They were tall, slim, dressed in dark colors. Seven warriors, all male, sitting or standing at the base of a tree, talking. Watching them, Moon saw the glitter of bright metal. Some of them were wearing bracelets, one a flat pectoral necklace, another had the glint of gold studs around his ears. Warriors didn’t often wear jewelry like that, not when they weren’t dressed up for a special occasion.
Those are consorts.
Moon knew just enough to realize it would be rude to shift and dive down there like he was stooping on prey. He took the nearest path off the reservoir’s rim, a set of artfully placed stones leading down. He made it to a curving garden platform just above the trees, only six paces or so above the lower terrace, an easy jump down even in his groundling form.
He had just reached the grassy edge of the terrace when one of the consorts spotted him and alerted the others with a warning hiss. Moon stopped, close enough to see they were all his age or younger. Most matched Umber’s heavier build, red-brown hair, and lighter gold coloring, but three had dark hair and dark bronze skin, and were lean and lanky and sharp-featured. Seeing them all together like this, Moon suddenly understood how other Raksura could tell he wasn’t from one of Indigo Cloud’s bloodlines, could see the faint differences in coloring and build and feature, how a queen like Ice of Emerald Twilight might be able to add up all these slight factors to identify his bloodline.
They all stared back at him, blankly startled, and no one said anything. Deciding it was up to him, Moon took a breath to speak.
Almost as one, they all shifted, the sudden whoosh of displaced air enough to make him stumble backward. Leaping into the air, they were away in moments, and flew down the length of the well toward a broad balcony in the upper side of the trunk.
Moon stood there, stunned. Sick hurt settled over him like a blanket.
He looked up to see it had happened in full view of the Arbora working on the garden terraces above. Now they were all industriously hunched over, studying random plants or their baskets or the ground, whatever was handy, with an embarrassed air that clearly said they had seen everything.
He turned away, climbed slowly back up to the reservoir’s edge, and sat down on one of the stones around the rim. He wasn’t even sure why it hurt so much; it certainly wasn’t the first time he had been rejected by Raksura at first sight. It wasn’t even the first time he had been rejected at first sight in this colony.
But they’re related to you, and they have to know it.
They had to know the story, too, and that he had never been a solitary by choice.
He sat there a while, watching the stick insects skate across the water, when he heard someone leap up the steps at the far end of the rim.
He looked up to see a green Arbora just climbing onto the stones around the reservoir’s edge. She saw him and shifted to her groundling form. She was about Russet’s age, and like her she had dark bronze skin, but her hair was brown and curly, tied back with a beaded scarf. She was wearing a light blue dress, the sleeves rolled up and the hem knotted so it didn’t hang past her knees. She bolted toward him, her feet slapping the stone paving.
Moon stood, baffled, as she stumbled to a halt a few paces away. She said, “I just heard—They said you were with two Arbora children who were killed by Tath—Leaf and Fern?”
“Oh.” Moon felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Leaf had yellow-brown scales, Fern was dark green…”
“That’s them.” She took a sharp breath. “They were from my last clutch.”
They stared at one another a moment. Moon’s throat had gone dry. The Arbora distractedly pushed her curls back. “Who were the other two? I didn’t—”
“Bliss and Light.”
She nodded. “Their mother was Fair. She didn’t make it out of the colony. Neither did Yarrow. He was Fern and Leaf’s sire. That was our first clutch together. I don’t know about Bliss and Light’s sire, I’ll have to ask around. Not many of the soldiers and hunters made it out.” She blinked, and sat down suddenly on the paving.
Moon stood for a moment, unable to think of anything to say. All the words seemed to stick in his throat. Moving tentatively, he sat down beside her. She smelled of sweet herbs, and of fledglings and babies; she must be a teacher. He hoped she didn’t want him to go. Here was a living tie to his real family. “What’s your name?”
She rubbed her face, as if trying to push away the memories. “Sorry, I’m Feather.” She patted his knee absently. “I took care of you in the nurseries, when you were small enough to tuck under my arm.” As Moon was mentally reeling from that, she added, “They said there was a warrior with you? I didn’t recognize the name.”
“Sorrow. Her scales were dark copper. Her groundling form…She looked like me, same skin and hair. Except her eyes were brown.” He knew he wasn’t being very coherent, but it was the best he could manage.
“She must have changed her name.” Feather frowned and bit her lip in thought. “It sounds like she was from Malachite’s dominant bloodline, though. That should narrow it down a little. I’ll ask and see what the others who are my age remember. I suppose…” Her voice went thick. “She just grabbed as many children as she could?”
“Two in each arm. I was hanging on to her neck,” Moon told her. Then he went still, realizing what he had said.
I don’t remember that.
Except he did, the rush of air in his spines, clinging to a warm scaly body, Arbora babies too terrified to cry, and somewhere close by voices screaming in rage, agony…He squeezed his eyes shut, banishing the image. “What happened?”
“It was the Fell. Back then, they weren’t as bad in the east. There were a few small flights that we knew of, preying on isolated groundling towns or camps. They never hit big cities, like I’ve heard they’ve done now.” Feather’s gaze was on the gardens, and the Arbora moving along the plantings. “We never could figure out how they got so close.” She shrugged a little, her expression turning bitter. “None of us had ever seen or scented Fell before, so the rulers must have been able to confuse the soldiers who were guarding the ground entrances just long enough to get inside. The next thing we knew, there were dakti swarming the passages and major kethel digging in through the top.”
Moon hesitated, watching her. “You didn’t look for survivors, afterward?” He braced himself not to react to her answer, whatever it was.
He still wasn’t prepared for it when she said, “We looked, but we didn’t think there were other survivors. The queen and the warriors went after the prisoners the Fell took.”
“Prisoners?”
“They took Malachite’s consort, Dusk. Your father. Some Arbora and Arbora children.” Feather turned to him and squeezed his wrist. “Malachite thought you were with them. I thought that’s where my clutch was. The Kethel brought down one of the bluffs, and it collapsed into the colony. We didn’t know who was a prisoner and who was buried under the rubble. The only one we were sure of was Dusk, because some of us saw the Fell take him.” She made a helpless gesture. “But the hunters and some of the warriors searched the forest around the colony, looking for anyone who might be separated, hurt. They should have found you.”
Moon pulled away, shaking his head, confused down to the core. “But when I wasn’t with the prisoners, and there were others missing—”
“It took Malachite well over a turn to find them and free them,” Feather said.
Moon stared. “They were trapped with the Fell for a turn?” It was too horrifying to take in.
“I was with the Arbora survivors. There were maybe a hundred of us, and the wounded warriors, what was left of the children and fledglings. We were hidden in the forest near the colony. Malachite, the warriors who were still able to fight, and a couple of young mentors went after the Fell. Three nights later, Malachite came back alone and told us to follow the coast back to the west, back here to the mother colony, that she and the others would catch up with us when they could.”
The enormity of that was hard to imagine. “That’s a long way to walk.”
“We thought so,” Feather admitted. “But we started out. Slowly at first, with all the wounded, but we made better progress once the warriors recovered and could carry us for short distances. We got messages from Malachite along the way. She would send warriors to check on us, make sure we were still well and that she could find us when she needed to. She wouldn’t let the warriors who had healed up join her, made them stay with us. Then in the rainy season, months and months later, she came with the others. She brought all the prisoners back, except your father. He was dead, along with twelve of the warriors.” Her expression held remembered anguish. “We didn’t know how many prisoners the Fell had. We’d convinced ourselves that most of the court had survived. Seeing how few there were…” She shook herself, shaking off the memory, the beads in her hair clicking. She looked up at him, bewildered. “I don’t understand how we missed you. You were alone all that time?”
“Until this turn. Stone, the line-grandfather from Indigo Cloud, found me.”
Feather hissed, a combination of frustration and regret. “I wonder…Do you remember how long the warrior fled with you? If the Fell were chasing her—She must have gone some distance from the colony, or we would have stumbled on her.”
“I don’t remember. The Fell could have followed her because she was carrying us, because they wanted children.” After Indigo Cloud’s experience with the Fell flight who had been determined to crossbreed Raksura, it was a real possibility. “What did the Fell do to the prisoners? Did they try to make them breed with the progenitor and the rulers?”
Feather sat back, eyes widening in astonishment and consternation. He thought he had shocked her, until she said, “How did you know about that?”
So that’s a ‘yes,’
Moon thought. “It almost happened to Indigo Cloud, before the colony moved to the Reaches. It was a Fell flight that had bred with Raksura before, and wanted more of us. They had a few dakti with mentor powers, and a female ruler who was part Raksuran queen.” Even as he said it, a horrible realization struck, that Ranea and the mentor-dakti might have been born from the Opal Night prisoners. “It wasn’t—That couldn’t have been the same flight that attacked—”
“What? Oh no, no.” Feather shook her head emphatically. “Malachite killed their progenitor, and— There were none of our people left with them. The warriors told me there wasn’t much left of the flight at all.”
Moon subsided, relieved. Now that he thought about it, the timing didn’t match what Ranea had told him about her flight’s multiple attempts to crossbreed Raksura.
And she was part queen. She would have recognized my bloodline.
She surely wouldn’t have missed the chance to gloat over it. He said, “Opal Night should already know what happened to Indigo Cloud. The word’s been spreading through Emerald Twilight to the other courts.”