But his skin was pale, too pale, without even a hint of bronze or copper tint. When Raksura went to gray and then white with age, they lost the color in their hair as well as their skin. Only the groundling forms of Fell rulers had skin this pale when young.
So this was the crossbreed consort. Besides the skin color, Moon could see no trace of Fell.
He stared at Moon for a long moment, his tense body slowly relaxing as Moon made no move to attack. He cleared his throat and touched the book’s cover. “I was reading it when they said we had to move.” He hesitated. “You’re Moon. I’m Shade. We have the same father.”
“I know.” Their consort father would have been forced to mate with a Fell progenitor to produce Shade, but there didn’t seem to be any point in mentioning that. Moon stepped into the bower and paced along the wall. The hollowed-out niches held trinkets, mostly bits of jewelry, cups for a tea set, broken wooden pens, a couple of folded books. There was also a battered cloth doll, relic of Shade’s not so long ago fledglinghood. It all seemed so ordinary, not the place Moon would ever have imagined a half-Fell consort to live.
Atop a wicker chest was a sheet of paper, and Moon recognized the writing as Raksuran, though he couldn’t read any of it. But there were small scribbled drawings of plants, warriors in flight, and Arbora working in gardens. Drawing tools lay nearby, charcoal pieces and pens carved from reeds. He wondered if Shade had done the drawings himself. Moon had never been able to make a recognizable image on paper, even when he had tried to imitate groundlings’ work, and had never seen any of the Aeriat at Indigo Cloud do it. He had thought it was a skill reserved for Arbora. “Can you hear them?”
Shade didn’t need to ask who he meant. “No.” Still sitting on the fur, he had twisted around to watch Moon circle the room. “Is it true you were alone all this time?”
“Yes.” Moon stepped away from the drawings. “What are you going to do?”
“What? Oh, since no queen will take me, and I can’t leave the court?” Shade shrugged, long fingers fiddling with the book’s leather cover again. “I don’t want to leave; everyone I know is here.”
“You don’t want a queen?”
Shade’s young face was serious. “Even if there was one who wanted me, I shouldn’t breed.” It sounded as if he had given it a good deal of thought. “The clutch might be all right, like me and the others, but they might not.”
It was…not an unrealistic view of the situation. At least no one had lied to Shade about who and what he was, and what he was likely to expect. High in the wall there was an opening to the central well, and Moon stopped beneath it, listening. It must be in a fold of the trunk that faced away from the reservoir, so the rush of falling water was more distant, and the clicks and calls of the insects sleeping in the vines were audible. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from this conversation. Maybe nothing.
Then Shade said suddenly, “Feather said you look just like our father.”
Moon went still. For an instant he felt his connection to this court, to Malachite, and it tugged on him like a leash.
He turned to face Shade, who was lost in thought, turning the pages of the book. Shade said, “I never saw him, because he died, but…The other consorts who live here with me, they’re descended from Malachite’s sister queen who died, and they look a little like him too. So do our cross-clutchmates, in Onyx’s bloodline. But they’re soft, and you’ve got hard edges. It makes you look older and Feather said you look just like him. I think that’s why Malachite was afraid to see you.” Shade frowned thoughtfully, apparently oblivious to the effect this was having on Moon. “I guess that must have hurt you, but I don’t think she realized what it was going to be like, seeing the image of him again. Feather said Malachite’s been so filled with rage that she’s barely felt anything else in forty turns. You coming back means she has to let some of that go. That’s hard for her.”
Moon turned away. He didn’t want to believe it; he didn’t want to give Malachite that much credit. But Dart had said the queen started to enter the room, saw Moon, and left.
He heard a rustle as Shade moved uneasily, maybe finally sensing that this was a difficult subject. Shade said, “What was it like, traveling out in the world?”
Root had asked Moon that once, what felt like a lifetime ago. Chime had countered the question with “what is the wind like?” but Moon wanted to give Shade a better answer. But summing up the totality of the wind would have been easier. He said, “It was hard, but…it wasn’t all bad. I saw a lot of different places, and people.”
“But there weren’t any other Raksura?”
“I didn’t know where to look for them.” He turned back, and Shade’s baffled expression almost made him smile. “The Three Worlds is a big place.”
Shade seemed as if he was having trouble imagining it. “Did you live with a groundling court?”
“Sometimes. But when they realized what I was, I always had to leave.” Shade’s confusion deepened, and Moon explained gently, “In the east, where I was living, the groundlings are afraid of Raksura. They think we’re Fell.”
“But we—you don’t look like a Fell!”
“To them we all do.”
Shade’s brow furrowed as he turned that over. “I see. But…you must have been lonely.”
It was a surprise that Shade saw that so readily. He had always been surrounded by his court, protected by a powerful reigning queen who had fought her way through a Fell flight and killed a progenitor to retrieve the last of her dead consort’s offspring. But maybe he was aware of what could have happened to him.
Still considering it, Shade said, “The only place I’d like to see outside the court is Aventera. The warriors described it to me, and it sounds very strange. But I’m not sure I want to meet groundlings, if they’re going to be afraid of me.”
“Aventera.” Moon hadn’t heard the name before, but he could make a guess. “Is that the groundling city that Celadon went to?”
“Yes.” Shade yawned, and got to his feet, the book tucked under his arm. “I’d better go back now.” He hesitated, shy and uncertain and very like an ordinary young Raksura. “Can we talk again?”
Moon hesitated, but he was surprised to realize what his answer was. “Yes.”
Shade nodded and disappeared down the passage.
Moon waited until Shade’s steps had faded, then he went down to his own bower. Stone hadn’t moved, and Moon lay down beside him. The fur still held the shape of his body, though he had been gone long enough for it to lose the warmth. Stone didn’t comment, and after a moment, Moon said, “Did you hear all that?”
“Yes.” He was silent for so long, Moon thought that was all he was going to say. Then Stone added, “Not sure I would have done it, in their place. It would have just made it that much worse, if they’d turned wrong when they got older.”
It was a strange thing that Opal Night had done, that Malachite had done, raising these changeling children instead of killing them. Moon wondered how many courts would have done it. He thought most Raksura would have considered it mercy to kill them. Moon might have thought it himself, if he hadn’t met Lithe and Shade.
Hard as it would have been to kill something that must have looked very like a baby Raksura, it would have been much, much worse to watch it turn from a child into a monster. But Opal Night had taken the risk. Maybe Malachite saw it as another path to victory over the Fell. Raising the crossbreeds as Raksura, to show that Raksuran blood was stronger. “So you think they were right?”
Stone rolled over, clearly putting an end to the conversation. “I think they were lucky.”
* * *
Moon woke at dawn, when Stone was stirring. Russet and two other Arbora must have been listening for them to move, because they brought a kettle and pot for tea immediately. Russet lingered as if she wanted to say something, but left when Stone glared narrowly at her.
Moon picked up the pressed cake of tea and the wooden tool used to scrape it off into the pot. “What was that about?”
“I don’t like interfering Arbora.” Stone took the cake and the scraper away, and moved the pot out of Moon’s reach. He was particular about tea.
“The Arbora at Indigo Cloud aren’t interfering?” Because that hadn’t been Moon’s experience.
Stone sniffed at the tea dubiously, then set it aside and got his own out of his pack. “It’s different when they’re related to you.”
Moon waited until Stone had the first cup down before he said, “I want to stay. I want to find out what Opal Night is going to do about the Fell and the groundling city.”
Stone hissed in pure irritation and deliberately set the cup down. It was a delicate blue ceramic, with bands of silver gray and dark green, in a complex pattern that would probably make the Arbora at Indigo Cloud sick with envy. “Are you going to say that to Jade when she gets here?”
Until last night, Jade’s arrival had felt like something from a Hassi creation myth: much longed for but expected to be apocryphal. Even knowing that she would be here soon, Moon was still having trouble thinking logically about it. He didn’t answer, and Stone continued, “And if I can’t get you out of here, do you think your crazy mother who had you dragged all the way across the Reaches is just going to hand you over when Jade asks?”
When Stone said “mother,” Moon still thought first of Sorrow and not Malachite, and it took him a moment to answer. “She doesn’t have any reason to keep me here.”
A voice from behind him said, “You don’t want to know us at all, do you?”
Moon twitched around. Celadon stood in the doorway. Distracted, he hadn’t heard her arrival, but he felt fairly certain it hadn’t gone unnoticed by Stone. Irritated at being caught unawares, at her for existing, at Stone, he told her, “No, I don’t. Why should I?”
Celadon stepped forward, spines flicking in agitation. “We’re your bloodline. We’re responsible for you—”
Moon shoved to his feet. “You left me to die in a forest. That’s what you’re responsible for.”
“That wasn’t me, I didn’t leave you! I was a fledgling myself, whether you remember or not.” Celadon’s spines snapped up, trembling with fury. “I lost you, I lost our clutchmates, the others in the nurseries, I lost our father, I lost Twist and Yarrow, the teachers who took care of us, almost everyone I knew.” She turned away, and her tail lashed angrily. “You are the only thing I’ve ever gotten back from that time.”
“It’s too late!” Moon snarled at her. He knew he wasn’t being fair, but the mix of anger and pain wouldn’t let him admit it. “I can’t be him again, I’m something else.”
“I don’t expect you to!” She rounded on him, baring her fangs. They glared at each other, then Celadon took a deep breath, forcing her spines down, deliberately calming herself. “I know you’re different now.” Reluctantly, she added, “Do you hate us so much?”
“I don’t hate you,” Moon said, though he wasn’t sure if that was true. “I just don’t know why you want me here.”
She hissed, exasperated. “Because you’re part of us.”
“It’s too late for that, too.”
She watched him, her spines going completely flat as the last of the anger left her expression. Finally, she said, “Malachite wants to see you.” She tilted her head toward Stone. “And the line-grandfather.”
Stone set his teacup down. “Good.”
* * *
Celadon led them to the queens’ hall, where they had argued last night. Moon was assuming this was the queens’ hall for Malachite’s bloodline, and that Onyx and her daughters had a separate set as far away as possible.
In the day, shafts of light fell down from the well high overhead to light the carvings winding up the wall. Malachite waited for them, sitting to one side of the bowl hearth with several Arbora, including Lithe and Russet, behind her. Also present was Malachite’s warrior Rise, a few other older female warriors and, surprisingly, Shade. Shade was the only one who smiled when Moon walked in.
Moon knew enough by now to recognize the formal setup: the way the Arbora and warriors were dressed in the silky flowing fabrics of their good clothes, the tea set beside the hearth that no one would probably use, the arrangement of the seating mats and cushions. He just had no idea what it meant in context with his situation.
You could have asked Celadon,
he told himself,
if you hadn’t been busy yelling at her.
Celadon moved past to sit near Malachite, and Moon and Stone took seats opposite the queens. Apparently, there was no older male consort who belonged to Malachite. Which meant Malachite hadn’t taken another after Moon’s father had been killed.
Malachite broke the silence first, saying to Stone, “Do you still plan to tell other courts about our crossbreed children?”
Shade twitched, startled, and looked anxiously from Malachite to Stone.
Unperturbed, Stone said, “Was I supposed to be reconsidering it?”
Malachite’s voice stayed level. “Answer me.”
Stone countered, “Are you still planning to steal Indigo Cloud’s consort?”
“You and I both know you had no right to take him.”
We could be here all day,
Moon thought. If Malachite was one tenth as stubborn as Stone, this could go on for the rest of the turn. He said, “Isn’t it my fault, for agreeing to be taken?”
Everyone stared at him, as if they had all expected him to just sit silently. Stone hissed, “Shut up.”
“No, you shut up.” The swipe Stone took at his head was half-hearted and Moon ducked it easily. He kept his gaze on Malachite. “Isn’t it my fault?”
Malachite didn’t answer, though her tail made a slow lash. Celadon’s spines rippled in annoyance and she said, “You didn’t know any better. You—”
Malachite said, “Quiet.”
Celadon subsided reluctantly. Moon said, “I didn’t know any better. And all Indigo Cloud knew was what I told them. So if you don’t hold me responsible, then you can’t hold them responsible. They had every right to take me.”
There was a moment’s silence. Malachite’s tail did that slow lash again, that Moon couldn’t interpret. It occurred to him at that point that they could very well blame him for accepting Jade without his birthcourt’s permission. He should have bothered to find out what the punishment was for that, but at worst it would be exile from Opal Night, which wouldn’t leave him any worse off than he had been before. Though it would be somewhat ironic.