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.