It was a fingerwidth-wide band, in pieces now so it was hard to tell if it was meant for a bracelet, necklace, or ankle or arm band. It was figured with the coiled shapes of Aeriat, all with wings half-spread and outstretched arms, intended to hold polished stones that hadn’t been set into place yet. Moon was startled again by how intricate the Arbora’s creations were, how much hard work they were willing to do just for the sake of art. “That’s beautiful.”
Merry and Gold both flinched, staring up at him. “Moon!” Gold, an older female with masses of curly auburn hair, managed to say, “Uh, we didn’t hear you come in.”
“Sorry.” Moon sat on his heels for a closer look at the piece. “Is it for Jade or Pearl?” Now that they were getting visits from other courts, the Arbora might be feeling a need to make sure their queens had more impressive finery.
Moon looked up in time to catch a fleeting expression of relief on Gold’s face, but it was gone too fast to be sure he hadn’t imagined it. “It’s for Pearl,” Merry said. Lifting his brows, he added, “You think she’ll like it?”
Gold nudged Merry’s shoulder, giving him a quick glare, as if she hadn’t liked the question. That Moon definitely hadn’t imagined. “Of course she will,” he said, and stood, leaving before it got more awkward. They must have thought he would be annoyed that it was meant for Pearl and not Jade.
It was two days later when Moon figured out who the piece was actually for.
* * *
It had rained all night and much of the morning, very bad conditions for work on the outer platforms, so most of the court was staying inside today. Moon sat with the others in the teachers’ hall, which had become a common gathering place for Arbora and Aeriat alike.
It was a large central chamber below the greeting hall, its walls and domed ceiling covered with a detailed carving of a forest, with plume trees, spirals, fern trees, and many others, their branches reaching up to entwine overhead, their roots framing the round doorways that led off to different passages. With the shells set into the walls glowing with soft white light and the hearth basins filled with warming stones, it was a comfortable welcoming space. There was always someone there, and it was a good place to go if you wanted to talk, or just listen to others talk. Someone was always making tea, baked spiced roots, or flatbread, and the older Arbora gathered there to tell stories, or read aloud from one of the books in the mentors’ library.
Moon liked the readings best, since that was his only chance to hear what was in the books. He had taught himself to read the other languages he could speak, but Altanic and Kedaic had much simpler writing systems. The written Raksuran language was proving just as twisty and complicated as the Raksura themselves.
He had been trying to remedy this, timing many of his visits to the nurseries to coincide with reading lessons. He sat with Frost, Bitter, and Thorn while Rill or Bark or one of the other teachers drew the letters and words on clay tablets and the fledglings copied her. When they read from the simpler books, Moon looked over their shoulders. It wasn’t a particularly effective way to learn, since he couldn’t be there for every lesson and he couldn’t ask questions without giving himself away. But he had made some progress, memorizing all the characters for the various sounds, and he was starting to recognize a number of words. He didn’t think anyone had caught on, except, oddly enough, for Thorn.
At the third lesson Moon had attended, Thorn had eyed Moon thoughtfully, and moved his tablet so Moon had a better view of it. Moon had eyed him back, but they had never spoken of it, and Moon was fairly sure Thorn hadn’t shared his suspicion with anyone else, even Frost or Bitter. He thought Thorn might like having a secret to share with Moon, something that was his alone. That suited Moon.
But that rainy afternoon in the teachers’ hall, no one brought out a book. Instead, Rill said, “Moon, tell us a story about groundlings.”
The Arbora and older warriors settled in to listen, and even the young warriors lounging on the fringes of the group were hard put to conceal their interest. The entire court knew Moon’s life had been substantially different from theirs, but most of them had little idea of what that really meant. They knew he had traveled widely and seen strange places, but so had Stone. Moon had never seen much point in trying to convey what it had really been like, so he avoided stories like the time he had had to flee a Morain cliff-town in the middle of the night, got trapped in a tunnel and had to hide in a crack in the rock barely wider than his body while his former comrades hunted him.
So he told them about the Deshar in the hanging city of Zenna, and their elaborate social customs that made passing through the place so difficult for visitors. Predictably, everyone wanted to hear more about the Deshar’s attitudes about sex, which were as baffling to the other Raksura as they had been to Moon at the time.
“So if they have sex without this ceremony first, they can’t have it again?” Bone said, scratching the scar around his neck thoughtfully. He was clearly having trouble following this strange brand of logic.
Moon tried to explain. “Sort of. You can only have sex with your permanent mate, and you can’t have a permanent mate without the ceremony, and if you have sex before the ceremony, nobody wants to be your permanent mate.”
Bark frowned. “But do they have to have a permanent mate?” Except for queens and consorts, Raksura usually didn’t.
“If they want babies. If you have a baby with anybody but a permanent mate, it’s bad. For you and the baby.” The idea that offspring might be unwanted was hard for Raksura to understand as well. Queens and Arbora only clutched when they wanted to, and there were always teachers to take care of the babies or fledglings.
“But how do the others know if someone’s had sex?” Chime protested. “How can they tell? If they have sex without the ceremony, shouldn’t they just keep quiet about it?”
“Do they change color when they have sex?” Balm asked thoughtfully.
“No. They just seemed to know.” Moon admitted, “I never figured that part out.”
Bone snorted, stretching to pick up the kettle. “Strange creatures. Though I’m sure they’d say the same of us.”
If confronted by a Raksura, the Deshar would probably have been too busy having hysterics to say anything. In the east where Raksuran courts were rare, groundlings confused them with Fell. Before Moon could point this out, one of the soldiers, Grain, dropped down the stairwell from the greeting hall, calling out, “Where’s— Moon, visitors just arrived from another court! Two queens, and some warriors, and they’ve got a consort with them!”
Everyone gasped and exclaimed. Moon exchanged an alarmed look with Chime and Balm. That meant this was the most formal form of visit.
It would have to be today,
Moon thought. Everyone would have been tracking mud and water through the greeting hall all morning. Knowing Raksura, the visitors had probably planned it this way to put them at a disadvantage. He said, “Is someone telling the queens?”
“Yes, Sage went up there,” Grain told him, bouncing up and down with excitement.
Rill stood hastily, shaking crumbs out of her skirt. To Balm, she said, “We should give them tea in the greeting hall first, give them a chance to dry off before we send them up to the queens’ hall.”
Balm got to her feet, looking down at herself helplessly. “I have to get up there.” The senior female warriors were the ones who were supposed to initially greet visitors, and as Jade’s clutchmate, Balm was the most senior one available. She was wearing an old pair of brown pants and a shirt stained with the juice from the berries they had all been eating, and her only jewelry was a copper armband. She was still beautiful, but it was definitely not the way to be dressed while formally greeting two foreign queens and a consort. Moon looked worse, but he wouldn’t have to appear until the first round of formal greetings were done, and that might take quite a while, depending on how difficult the queens all decided to be.
“Wait, wait,” Rill said, and whipped off her dress, holding it out toward Balm. “Put this on!”
“Oh, good idea.” Balm took her shirt off and pulled on the sleeveless dress. She was much taller than Rill, so on her it was more of a tunic, but the dye on the soft fabric was a blue that faded to violet toward the hem, and it looked good against Balm’s dark groundling skin. Someone else contributed a necklace of flat polished amethyst and everyone judged Balm ready to go.
Balm took a deep breath and started up the stairs with Grain, as everyone else scattered to get cushions and one of the better tea sets. Moon headed off to take the back passages up to the consorts’ level.
As Moon traveled upward through the colony, he warned everyone he met about the visitors. When he reached the Aeriat levels, he skipped the queens’ level and went right to the consorts’, tracing a path through the maze of empty rooms and antechambers and bathing rooms to his bower, just above Jade’s.
He hadn’t spent a lot of time here. During the evenings, he was either down in Jade’s bower, or Chime’s, or sitting with the others in the teachers’ hall. But this was the first time he had had a room in a permanent structure that was just for him.
The curving ceiling was carved with Aeriat in flight, on a background of waves that Chime had said symbolized the west wind. The half-shell of the bed hung near the far wall, lined with comfortable blankets and cushions. The hearth basin was in the center, and filled with fresh warming stones. There were a couple of furs and some cushions to sit on, and a woven-reed basket stood against the opposite wall, holding a few extra blankets and his clothes. A normal consort Moon’s age would have far more possessions than this, baskets stuffed with belongings and gifts. What Moon had was a narrow shelf in the wall, holding the things that the fledglings and the Arbora children had given him on his visits to the nurseries. These were usually shiny rocks or pieces of wood, or intricate little sculptures made out of twigs or twisted scraps of cloth.
He opened the top basket, and pulled out his best set of clothes. The shirt and pants were made of the same silky fabric, the color a blue so dark it was almost black. He also had a belt-sash woven through with gold threads. That, with his consort’s gift, a heavy red-gold bracelet with the serpentine shapes of two entwined Raksura etched into the band, should be enough to make him look respectable. And respectable was about as good as it was going to get.
Chime ducked in through the doorway, having hastily changed clothes as well. “Is that what you’re wearing?” he said, as Moon was pulling the shirt over his head. He caught Moon’s narrow-eyed look and waved his hands. “Sorry, I’ll be quiet!”
Moon had arrived at Indigo Cloud with nothing except the clothes on his back, which by that point had been about to fall off. He now had clothes for both everyday use and to save for special occasions, which was more than he had ever owned in his entire life. “Did you hear where they were from?”
“Yes, and it’s a little odd.” Chime paced anxiously, tightening the sash around his waist. “One of the queens is Tempest, from Emerald Twilight.”
“Again?” That was odd. Unless this visit was meant as amends for the last abbreviated one. Or revenge for the last abbreviated one.
But they brought a consort.
“I know, it doesn’t make sense.” Chime waved his hands, baffled. “The other queen is Zephyr, a sister queen from Sunset Water. They’re related somehow. I think she’s the daughter of an Emerald Twilight consort, maybe Shadow’s clutchmate, who was given to the reigning Sunset Water queen.”
Moon committed that to memory, in case it came up in later conversations. One of the benefits to being a consort was that he wasn’t expected to talk much during these visits. He would presumably have to speak to the other consort at some point, though.
Just don’t get in a fight,
he reminded himself.
Chime continued, “But I can’t think why Tempest is here with her. It’s not like a Sunset Water queen would need an introduction. They must have known we’d be happy to make an alliance with them.”
“We’ll find out,” Moon said. He folded his arms, resisting the urge to pace with Chime. It would be a while before he needed to appear. The warriors would be made comfortable down in the greeting hall, and the queens would be taken up to the queens’ hall to make pointed conversation with Jade, then Pearl would appear, then finally they would send for Moon. It might be different, considering the extra queen and the consort, but…
“Moon?” Floret stepped into the doorway. Her face was anxious, her copper skin flushed. “They want you in the queens’ hall now.”
“Already?” Chime stared. “Are you sure?”
Floret spared him an annoyed glance. “Very sure.” She told Moon, “Jade is…tense.”
“Right.” Moon bit his lip. Obviously the situation with Tempest was about to come to a head.
It can’t be that bad. They wouldn’t bring a consort with them to declare war on us. I think.
“I’ll go down.”
Chime said, worriedly, “Good luck.”
Moon took the winding stair down to the consorts’ passage, pausing for a quick look into the queens’ hall.
Everyone was sitting near the hearth basin, which had been filled with fresh warming stones, steaming faintly in the damp air. Cushions had been scattered around for seating, with the visiting queens and the consort facing Jade and Pearl, with Bone, Heart, Bell, and Knell, representing the four castes of the Arbora, arrayed in a half circle behind them. The four Arbora must have been hastily summoned; they were wearing silk robes, embroidered or with water-faded patterns. This was something of a shock, since Moon had seldom seen Bone and Knell wear anything but battered leathers and work clothes. The best kettle was on the heating stones in the hearth, with a set of blue-glazed cups waiting nearby.
Everyone was in groundling form, except the four queens, who were still winged. Jade and Pearl wore their best jewelry, armbands, heavy necklaces, rings, belts of silver wire and flat polished stones.
Facing them were the two foreign queens. Tempest was about Jade’s age, with light blue scales webbed with gold. Zephyr of Sunset Water, seated beside her, was older, with a heavier build, and had dark amber scales with a green web. The smaller figure of the consort was seated behind them, wearing a dark robe with the hood pulled up. From this angle all Moon could see were his hands, folded tightly in his lap.