“It’s not as if anyone in the court is going to believe anything else,” Moon pointed out. “Simple lies are always better.”
Celadon lifted her brows, possibly at this evidence that Moon knew a lot about the best way to lie convincingly. “I see.”
Fortunately, footsteps came down the stairs at that point and Lithe stepped into the doorway. She had her satchel slung over her shoulder and wore an extra shawl over her work clothes. She looked around the room, curious and a little uneasy. Moon realized this must be her first time to leave the area around the colony, let alone to be on a flying boat. He didn’t know what to say to make her feel more comfortable, so he just asked, “Ready to go?”
“Yes.” Lithe took a deep breath and managed a wan smile. Above their heads the deck creaked as more Raksura landed. Moon assumed it was Celadon’s warriors. Lithe started a little at the unaccustomed sound of people walking on the thin wood above her head, and said, “I didn’t expect it would be so… odd, to think of leaving the colony, even for a few days.”
Celadon told her, “It’s brave of you. And if it works the way we hope, we’ll know what brought the Fell here.”
If it works the way we hope,
Moon thought, and tried to suppress the urge to again mentally list everything that could go wrong.
Then someone dropped down the stairs and stepped into the doorway. It was a young queen about Celadon’s size, with a slender build. Her scales were a light gold webbed with copper. She saw Moon first, and acknowledged him with a tilt of her head and an opaque expression. Moon thought at first he had never met her before, then realized he had seen her with Onyx. She must be one of the other Opal Night bloodline’s daughter queens.
“Ivory,” Celadon said, sounding suspiciously neutral. “We’ll be leaving in a moment. Are your warriors aboard?”
“Yes. It’s a very strange craft.” She nodded politely to Delin. “This should be an interesting trip.”
Ivory,
Moon thought. The queen that Onyx had gotten Umber to suggest as a possible match for Moon. Of all the things that could go wrong, that hadn’t even occurred to him as a possibility.
* * *
Under Delin’s direction, the warriors helped the flying boat cast off, while the Islander crew watched worriedly from the colony’s landing platform.
As the ship lifted above the ridge surrounding the split colony tree, Moon managed to catch Celadon alone in the bow, out of earshot of the others. Before he could speak, she said, “We thought it was better to have two queens aboard, in case the Fell struck before we reached the others. I didn’t know you planned to come. This is not my fault.”
That invalidated most of what Moon had been about to say. He fell back on, “Does she know I turned her down?”
“Yes. And more importantly, she knows Malachite does not approve of her offer.” Celadon hissed impatiently, then turned to wave to Delin in the steering cabin, indicating he should turn to the right more to avoid the branches of the standing portion of the tree. “You can’t be afraid of her. You saw Malachite’s reaction to Jade, the queen you want. What do you think she’d do to one who tried to touch you against your will? And besides that, I’m your clutchmate and I’m right here.”
“I don’t know how you can be my sister,” Moon said. “You’re so damn naive.”
She showed her fangs. “Just let her get to know you, then she definitely won’t bother you.”
The boat successfully navigated the colony’s valley, and made its way into the sparse forest of mountain-trees and rock that marked the fringe of the Reaches. The afternoon and evening was occupied by avoiding obstacles and in teaching the warriors how to help Delin sail the boat. Chime and Root already knew quite a bit from their previous trips on wind-ships, Chime because he still had his mentor’s curiosity and Root because his memory, honed by keeping track of everything everyone had ever said in his hearing, was as good as a written book.
Balm was the only Indigo Cloud warrior who had accompanied Jade. Besides Chime, Root, Floret, and Song, ten Opal Night warriors had come along on the boat. Five of them had come with Celadon on their previous trip to the city, and they treated Moon with a combination of wariness and respect that made their company undemanding. The other five belonged to Ivory and were led by Saffron, the female warrior Moon had ordered off the flying boat. Moon reminded himself that he was getting what he wanted, another chance to tell the Aventerans how to fight the Fell, and objecting to the company was pointless.
None of the tasks aboard the boat were difficult for Raksura, who were physically stronger than the smaller Islanders and had no fear of falling, so Moon left them to it. He found a spot up in the bow, where he could sit on a cask tied off to the rail and watch the forest go by.
The flying boat’s steady but more leisurely speed allowed for close observation of everything they passed, and it was fascinating to be able to study the individual mountain-trees, their shapes, the flowers and the riot of vegetation on their platforms, and the life that occupied them. Since the trees were further apart here, more light reached the ground far below, so Moon had a better view of the rocky gullies and gorges, the different levels of the jungle deep within. And there were occasional intriguing glimpses of the creatures that lived down in the shadowy crevices.
After a while, Chime wandered up to the bow, leaned against Moon’s side, and sighed heavily. Moon asked, “Everything all right?”
“Yes. It’s just… the waiting.” Chime admitted reluctantly, “I’m afraid to see Fell again. Not that I’ve seen them as closely as you have. But… I’d rather not.”
A hesitant voice said, “What are they like?”
Moon glanced around and saw Lithe sitting on the deck a little distance away, her back against a support that helped anchor the cables stretching up to the central mast. She had her shawl wrapped around her and looked forlorn. It was a strange question to hear her ask, and Moon and Chime must have had similar expressions. With a little asperity she added, “I may be half-Fell, but I’ve never seen one. Just drawings in books.” She leaned forward. “Tell me. I don’t want to be unprepared.”
Chime said, “They’re very frightening.” He made an impatient gesture, as if annoyed with his own words. “That goes without saying, but… We all know there are a lot of things out there that want to kill us and eat us, but there’s something different about Fell. Maybe it comes from being descended from the same species.”
There was a lot Moon could say, but he decided to try to get across the most important point. “Fell don’t just want to eat you, they want to own you. They act like they already do own you.”
Lithe hugged herself a little tighter. Chime hunched his shoulders unhappily and cast an uneasy glance out at the shadows under the mountain-trees.
Moon continued, “Almost everything they say to you is a lie, and it probably won’t be that hard for you to tell it’s a lie. But it’s worse when they tell you the truth.” Moon felt Chime draw breath to ask a question, then let it out as he thought better of it. “Even if what they say is true, you can’t let it matter to you. Don’t let yourself be trapped by it.”
Lithe’s expression was intent. “I think I understand.”
“You sound as if you discovered that the hard way,” a new voice said.
It was Ivory, standing on the deck a few paces behind them. She was in her Arbora form, her head inclined at a thoughtful angle. Celadon was nowhere in sight.
Moon eased down off the water cask in case a quick escape was called for, but Ivory stayed where she was. Lithe was watching him expectantly, and Chime looked uncomfortable but curious. Moon hadn’t intended to answer, but maybe Celadon was right: if Ivory got to know him better, she might lose interest. He said, “Before Indigo Cloud found me, I had never seen another Raksura. The first time I saw Fell, when they attacked a groundling city, I thought I might be one. So I asked one of the rulers if that was true.”
Lithe hissed in dismay. Ivory’s tail stirred in agitation, but she kept her voice under control as she asked, “And what did it say?”
“That I was a Fell.” He let that hang in the air for a moment, then said, “I didn’t believe it. I killed it to get away, but it shared the knowledge with other rulers before it died. The Fell followed me to Indigo Cloud, because they wanted to make more Raksuran crossbreeds.”
He was hoping Ivory would retreat in appalled horror, or say something that would make her disgust clear. Instead she just watched him thoughtfully. She said finally, “Thank you for telling me that.”
Damn it
, Moon thought. He should have realized that being stalked by the Fell just wasn’t as shocking to the Raksura of Opal Night as it had been to Indigo Cloud. Before he could consider a precipitous retreat, Ivory said, “Lithe, I came up here to look for you. Celadon wants to speak to you about doing an augury.”
Lithe got to her feet and followed Ivory away toward the stern. Watching them, Chime said, “Celadon didn’t send another queen to fetch a mentor when there’s fourteen warriors on this boat with barely anything to do.” He added darkly, “She’s better at this than she seems. Be careful.”
“I know,” Moon muttered. He remembered Umber’s comment that Ivory would consider Moon a challenge; he had the feeling that this ostensibly subtle campaign might just be the first step. It had also belatedly occurred to him that Malachite might be enough of a strategist to express disapproval of Ivory’s proposal, both to lure Moon into a false sense of security and knowing that her approval would only make his resistance more stubborn. “It’s not going to work.” But he was very glad that Jade had come to Opal Night.
* * *
The flying boat had moved out of the fringe by the time the sky was starting to darken toward evening. The wind carried the rich scents of sweet grasses and a number of strange grasseaters.
As they crossed the plain, Moon saw a rock formation far ahead where bleached white pillars stretched up into arches, almost high enough to reach the boat’s hull, like the ribs of some giant creature. He hadn’t noticed it on their earlier trips back and forth across the plain, but they had come out of the fringe a little further to the north, and from so far above that the odd shape of the formation might not have been as apparent.
When they drew close enough for it to be visible to groundling eyes, Delin left Song in charge of the tiller and moved up to the railing beside Moon. That was when Moon realized the white shapes that looked like ribs were actually ribs. The ship was passing the skeletal remains of an enormous creature, collapsed and lying half-buried in the vegetation covering the plain.
The boat grew quiet, everyone staring. The head and most of the body were buried in grass as tall as small trees. The ribs were each as wide as the flying boat, weathered and cracked. Moon spotted movement and his prey reflex made his whole body twitch. But the motion was a groundling who had used ropes and climbing spikes to scale one of the arching ribs.
The groundling had dark green fur and its body was shaped like a treeling, but it had a bag slung over its shoulder and hammered on the bone with an ax-like tool. Holes all over the ribs indicated this activity had been going on for some time.
Mining,
Moon realized,
cutting into the bone for the dried marrow inside it
. He saw more movement in the tangle of greenery at the skeleton’s base; there must be more groundlings at work down there, maybe a camp, or some means to transport the marrow.
Astonished and caught unaware by the craft’s silent approach, the climber stopped hammering to stare as the flying boat drew even with its position on the rib. It lifted its free hand hesitantly in greeting; Delin lifted a hand in return as the boat drifted past.
The groundling continued to stare after the boat, leaning down and angling its head for a better view of the underside of the hull. Moon watched it until the skeleton vanished into distance and twilight; it was a reminder that other peoples were depending on them to destroy this Fell flight, whether they knew it or not.
For her part, Ivory had scrupulously done nothing to annoy Moon or to pursue her interest with him. She never stood too close to him on deck, stepped aside to let him go through doorways first. This should have been reassuring, but it had the effect of making him acutely aware of her presence at all times. Moon didn’t think it was unintentional.
Leaning against the rail, Celadon watched Moon regard Ivory with deep suspicion, and said in exasperation, “I don’t know what Indigo Cloud is like, but neither Malachite nor Onyx would ever tolerate the kind of behavior you seem to expect from Ivory. We weren’t raised that way.”
Perversity made him ask, “Did Malachite beat you for misbehaving?”
“Hah. If you had to sit in front of her and Onyx, explaining exactly what you were thinking when you decided it was a good idea to pick a fight with one of your clutch cousins, you’d wish for a beating instead.”
Moon found himself mentally storing that tactic away for use on Frost, and reminded himself his future at Indigo Cloud was anything but secure.
Night settled over the ship. They were close enough to the ground to hear the hum of the evening insects, but not close enough to be troubled by them. A wary Saffron brought an invitation for Moon and Celadon to eat with Ivory. Moon told Saffron he wasn’t hungry and went to hide below decks.
Ivory’s and Celadon’s warriors had divided up the duties of the boat and of standing guard, so there wasn’t much for the Indigo Cloud warriors to do. They all ended up with Moon in one of the smaller sleeping cabins.
“This is frustrating,” Floret muttered, as she settled on the floor near the doorway. “They’re doing all the work. We look like useless hangers-on.”
“There’s still the Fell to worry about,” Song pointed out, as she pushed Root over to make room for her blanket. “If we’re lucky, we’ll have a chance to fight.”
“You’re both insane,” Chime told them. “We’ll be lucky if we never see a Fell again.”
Moon agreed, but he didn’t think it was likely to happen. There was more grumbling, and complaints, but eventually they all settled down. The wood of the deck was soft and springy, and it made a good bed. With Chime cuddled against him and surrounded by the others’ familiar scents, sleep came quicker than Moon would have thought.