“All right, so say that’s true,” Chime said. “What’s behind the door? If Shade is right, the Fell have been capturing consorts and Arbora and forcing them to breed for the past forty turns. What would they want so badly…” He trailed off.
Lithe hugged herself. “And it wasn’t just the flight that attacked our colony in the east, it was the one that attacked Indigo Cloud, too. They both failed and were destroyed, and this flight took up the task?”
Moon felt cold creep down his spine and settle in his stomach. Malachite had ruined the plan forty turns ago by finding the flight that had attacked Opal Night, killing the progenitor and all the rulers, and taking the crossbreeds. But the flight that had attacked Indigo Cloud must have begun their breeding experiment sometime before that. Destroying some small eastern court, taking the consorts and the Arbora and breeding them until they died, attacking Sky Copper and then Indigo Cloud to capture more Raksura. The Fell queen Ranea had implied that it was all meant to make the Fell more powerful.
Maybe she was a mistake. They never wanted a queen, they wanted a consort like Shade. And then Ranea came along, took over the flight and ruined the plan.
But who—or what—had come up with the plan? Who had gotten three—at least three, if there had been more failures in the east—different Fell flights to follow this scheme, and how had it known that the crossbreeds were still alive in Opal Night’s mother colony? That one of them was Shade, the crossbreed consort they had been hoping for, all this time.
Chime grimaced in distress. “I don’t want Shade to be right.”
“I don’t want a lot of things.” Moon picked up the drawing. “If the voice you heard, that thing Shade thought came into the nest, is their guide, why are they listening to it?”
“What did it offer them?” Lithe added quietly.
There was no answer for that, either.
Chapter Eighteen
T
he night wore on, and nothing changed. The kethel didn’t move from the deck, and the sac didn’t stop its rapid progress north. None of them slept well and the air seemed to get even worse; thick with Fell stench, stale, and damp, it was making everyone ill. Keeping their voices carefully low so the kethel wouldn’t hear, they talked about using the fire weapon and the oil to escape, and made and discarded a number of plans.
It all came down to the simple fact that even if they could get out of the sac, there was no way any of them could outrun the kethel, whether they tried to carry Lithe and the wounded or not. Moon thought the only way it might work was if some of them stayed behind to try to distract the Fell, while one or two tried to escape. And this would mean abandoning the wounded to die terribly.
As they sat on the floor of the cabin wearing their groundlings forms, weary, sick, and filthy, it was Saffron who finally brought up the inevitable. She said, simply, “I won’t leave Ivory.”
“No,” Floret agreed with a sigh. “I won’t leave Song and Root. I’m not keen on leaving anyone.”
Moon looked around. No one seemed hopeful. He said, “Is anyone willing to run, if we can get you out?” To make it sound less like an admission of weakness, he added, “To tell Opal Night what happened.”
They exchanged a few glances, but no one volunteered. Shade drew his fingers across the wooden deck. He had been quiet through the morning, and Moon had been keeping a worried eye on him. Shade said, “I can’t leave Lithe, or Ivory, or the warriors. Or you.” He lifted his head to meet Moon’s gaze. “I can’t.”
Moon rubbed his face. He hadn’t really expected anything else, but they had all just agreed to die here, and it felt wrong. It felt like failure and surrender. But he didn’t see another way. “All right. That’s settled.” He let his breath out in resignation. “We can’t let the Fell get to this place, whatever it is.”
Floret lifted her head. “The fire weapon.”
Miserable, Chime leaned against Moon’s shoulder and said, “I really don’t want to burn or get eaten, so will you promise to kill me before that happens?”
That was just another weight on Moon’s sinking heart, but he put an arm around Chime and hugged. “Yes.”
Lithe huddled in on herself. “Me too, please.”
Moon could tell he was going to end up killing everybody except Saffron, who was the only one he wouldn’t have minded killing. “Let’s figure out what we’re going to do, first.”
Saffron shrugged. “With the kethel guarding the deck, we can’t get out there with the fire weapon.” She added reluctantly, “So… we use it in here?”
No one seemed happy about that idea. Moon didn’t think it would accomplish anything except suicide. He said, “We need to set the sac on fire. If we set the boat on fire, even with the oil, I’m not sure it’ll do that.”
Chime sat up. “The boat will come apart, and the section that’s not attached to the sustainer will fall on the sac. But the Fell could just cut a hole in it and push the boat out.”
Shade set his jaw, grimly determined. “We just have to get the oil and the fire weapon outside the boat. Maybe I could say I wanted to talk to the progenitor, and get out on deck with it.”
“But you wouldn’t have time to do anything,” Floret pointed out. “You’d be carrying casks of oil and a groundling weapon. That kethel would flatten you as soon as it saw you.”
“We don’t have to go out on deck,” Lithe said suddenly. “We can cut a hole in the bottom of the boat.”
Now that was an idea. Moon said, “We could drop the oil onto the bottom of the sac, then shoot the fire weapon into it.”
Forgetting about their impending deaths, Chime looked excited by the prospect. “There are cutting tools onboard.”
Saffron said, “But what if the Fell realize what we’re doing? If the kethel feels the vibrations through the wood—“
Chime shook his head. “This wood doesn’t vibrate much at all. I noticed that when we first came aboard and slept on the floor. Even with all the groundlings walking around.”
Shade added, “None of you felt it up on the deck when I was climbing around under the boat.”
Lithe said, “And I doubt it would ever occur to the Fell to think that we’d do something to kill ourselves. They’re not exactly good at seeing from anyone else’s perspective.”
Floret agreed. “They’d think we were trying to escape. That might work to our advantage.”
She meant the Fell might prepare for Raksura escaping out of the hole in the boat, but not for oil and fire. If they could set a kethel on fire, it would be even better. Moon said, “Let’s get started.”
* * *
The first obstacle they encountered was the hull of the flying boat.
They had found some cutting tools during their first search of the cabins, and Moon thought that the small saw would be all they needed to cut through wood that seemed so light and fragile.
While Floret and Saffron kept watch, and Lithe tended to the wounded, Moon, Chime, and Shade went to the stern hold, where the bottom hull of the ship flattened out. They brought a couple of the lamps to light the area, and the soft glow of the spelled illumination was more than enough in the low-ceilinged space. They moved bales of supplies aside, Chime used ink from Delin’s store to mark out a square large enough to dump an oil cask through, and they got to work.
But the rounded blade of the saw, sharp as it was, could barely be forced through the wood.
After Moon and Shade working together managed to cut only a few fragments out, Moon said in exasperation, “I thought Niran was afraid the Arbora’s anvils would break the hull of the
Valendera
. This stuff is like iron.”
Chime grimaced. “Blossom was in charge of the repairs to Niran’s boats, and she said it turned out to be a bigger job than she thought at first. Now I know what she meant.” He used his claws to pick apart a chip. “I think an anvil is the only thing that would go through this. It’s not like wood from an ordinary tree. It’s all woven through with some sort of fiber. I wonder if they get it from the sea bottom.”
Moon leaned over to look. Chime was right: the outside appeared to be wood, but the inside was more like a thick leaf, shot through with a fibrous web that must make it extremely strong. Shade picked up another chip to examine it, and Moon said, “It makes sense. These boats travel so far, they’d have to be tough.”
They looked at each other in dismay. Chime admitted, “We can still cut it; it’s just going to take longer than we thought.”
Shade set the chip down. “But we were all worked up to kill ourselves today.”
They stared at him. He winced. “I was trying to make a joke. It didn’t work?”
Chime snorted, half in amusement and half in despair. Moon gave Shade a push on the shoulder. “Help me look for something to sharpen the saw.”
They took turns, working in teams of two, all the rest of the long day. Lithe tried using her magic to heat the section they wanted to cut through. It seemed to help a little, but Moon honestly couldn’t tell whether it was their imagination or not. They had to sharpen the saw frequently, and Moon began to worry that it would break. There were others onboard, but none as well-suited to the task as this one, and if they had to use another it would take even longer.
They weren’t cutting the wood completely through, leaving the outermost membrane intact to keep the cut piece from sagging and revealing their activity to any Fell that might be climbing or flying below them. It would make pushing the piece out a slower process than Moon would like, but this way was safer.
By that night everyone was exhausted and could barely force themselves to eat. Moon’s head was pounding and his stomach revolted even at the idea of bread and water. He would have thought it was a lingering effect of Russet’s poison, except that all the others clearly felt the same way. The only ones who were breathing well were the wounded; the healing sleep seemed to protect them from whatever it was.
“It’s the air,” Lithe said, wearily wiping her face. “It’s turning into a poison. The sac has to let in some fresh air, or we’d all be dead by now. But there must be too many Fell inside it.”
“Will it help if we block off the holes in the boat?” Saffron asked. There were small perforations at points in the sides of the hull, to vent the cabins.
“I think that might just kill us faster,” Lithe admitted.
They kept working through the night.
* * *
Moon woke suddenly, finding himself slumped over on the deck in the main cabin. His head felt clear for the first time in two days, and the pain in his temples had faded to a dull ache. Shade and Lithe sprawled nearby, stirring in their sleep. Saffron, leaning against the wall near the door and technically on guard, sat up blinking as if she had just woken. It felt like late morning.
Moon tasted the air; it was distinctly fresher, even under the Fell taint. “They must have opened the sac,” he said aloud.
Saffron stumbled to her feet. “We’re still moving.”
Maybe enough dakti had died off that the rulers had decided to let in some fresh air.
Maybe we’re almost there, and they opened it to send out scouts.
There was no salt scent in the air; it was impossible to tell how close or how far away the sea was.
Moon managed to stand, one leg tingling as circulation returned, and limped down the passage to the stern hold. Shade and Lithe trailed after him. The deck creaked overhead as the kethel stirred restlessly.
In the hold, Chime and Floret were just sitting up. They had both shifted to groundling, and were bleary and confused. “We fell asleep.” Chime yawned. “Is the air better?”
“The Fell opened the sac.” Moon crouched beside the cut section and felt it to see how much was left to go. Two sides of the square were finished, and the third had about a pace left. He leaned on it with both hands and applied his full groundling weight; it gave a little, but didn’t seem like it was ready to tear or break. But they wouldn’t need to do the whole section, just enough to push the flap down. They could always pour the oil out if they had to, but he thought knocking holes in the casks and dropping them would spread it faster, and prevent the Fell from stopping the fire before it was too late.
Then Saffron ducked into the hold, her spines flared. “More Fell just landed on the deck. A ruler spoke through the hatch, said they want to see Shade.”
Moon hissed a curse. They had just run out of time. They all stared at Shade. He stared back, startled. Then his spines shivered, and he said, reluctantly, “We can’t take the chance that they’ll come down here and see this. I have to go up on deck.”
“I’ll go with you,” Moon said. Chime stirred as if he might protest, but said nothing.
Shade took a deep breath. “You don’t have to.”
Yes, Moon did. He said, “They’ll expect it, because I did before.”
They left the others waiting anxiously, and started down the passage.
At the base of the steps, Shade stopped, his spines flicking in agitation. He squeezed his eyes shut, steeling himself. “Do you think they’re going to make me… do that again?”
After last time, the Fell knew Shade would do anything to protect the other Raksura, and there was no reason for them not to use that advantage. And there was no point in lying about it. “Probably.”
Shade made a noise somewhere between a hiss and a moan of despair. “At least the groundlings are dead. It doesn’t hurt them.”
Fell liked their prey to be freshly killed. There might have been captive Aventerans alive somewhere in the nest, kept for the next meal. Moon wasn’t going to tell Shade that.
They went up on deck, and Moon pushed the hatch closed behind them. It was hard to tell if there was still an opening in the sac somewhere or not. The light through the membrane was dim and murky, but while the air wasn’t fresh, it wasn’t painful to breathe, either.
As they stepped cautiously out from behind the steering cabin, Moon saw their kethel guard half-curled around the mast. Its legs and arms hung over the rails, and the big ugly horned head rested on the deck. Its eyes were slits, watching them with interest. Thedes stood near it, and dakti perched on the railings like particularly ugly carrion birds.
Thedes smiled at Shade. “We would speak with you again.”