by Martha Wells
Delin probably couldn’t hear it but he seemed to know what she meant. “Chime is badly off. So is Shade. The others . . . are not so well, either.”
Jade twitched her spines in acknowledgement, then winced at what that did to her wing muscles. She made herself say, “I’ll go down there.” Shade might not appreciate her presence, but Chime would, for now. Until someone told him what had happened in the ruin.
She pushed away from the rail and followed Delin, Balm trailing behind her.
Jade hadn’t intended to sleep, but at some point she must have. She lay on the floor in one of the belowdecks cabins, and flinched awake when Balm leaned over her. The mentor’s lights in the cabin were starting to fade and the air tasted of early dawn. The bruises on Balm’s face had had time to discolor but her eyes were alight and her expression made Jade’s heart seize up. Balm dragged at her arm. “Stone’s back! Come on!”
Jade shoved upright and followed her. Her back still ached and the little food she had been able to eat sloshed unpleasantly in her stomach. But the wind-ship stirred around her, more movement and voices than she had been conscious of in hours.
She stepped out onto the deck and saw Diar holding up a lamp, its light falling on the circle of Raksura, Golden Islanders, Rorra, and Kalam. In the center stood Stone, with the kethel beside him, crumpled on the deck. Jade caught Chime’s expression of painful hope and her mind went blank.
The kethel’s pale skin was mottled with dark bruises, raw burns, and bloody cuts and scrapes. As Jade stepped forward, it looked up at her. “Groundlings took the consort,” it said, its voice a harsh rasp.
Jade forced the words out, “Was he alive?” “It doesn’t know,” Stone said. His clothes were torn and covered with dust, smeared with blood where he must have been carrying the kethel. “When it woke, it saw Moon on the ground next to a pile of debris, but a Kishan flying boat was coming. It crawled away through the grass and hid under a piece of wall, and pretended to be dead. It saw groundlings in flying packs come down from the boat and carry Moon and at least three Hians away. I searched, and there were some dead Hians left near that spot. They must have taken anyone they found still alive.”
A flutter of anxious spines went through the warriors, and Bramble shook Chime’s arm. Shade turned and buried his face on Flicker’s shoulder. Jade couldn’t trust herself to speak. Balm said, “It saw which way the flying boat went?”
“Northeast,” Stone said.
Diar nodded sharply. “If my calculation of our position is correct, we’re at the edge of Kish-Jandera. North is the territory of Kish-Majora, and the city directly to the northeast is Kish-Karad.”
Kalam took a sharp breath. “The Imperial seat.”
Jade found her voice. “Get the kethel some water. Stone, Rorra, Kalam, we need to make plans.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Moon woke struggling to breathe, the stink of smoke overwhelming light and sound, nothing but dry grass and acrid metal and burning flesh. He had the bad feeling the flesh might be him; his skin felt like fire. He heard hushed voices, speaking some variation on Kedaic. Then footsteps, coming closer.
That penetrated the haze enough for him to realize the dirt and the scratch of grass was on his bare skin, that he was lying here in his groundling form, probably surrounded by dead Hians. Lavinat used a fire weapon on me, he remembered. He would have blood on his teeth, his hands. He knew what he had to do, pretend he was a groundling, come up with a story. He got his arms under him and tried to heave himself upright, but pain ran out of his chest like blood and water, and he slid down into burning darkness again.
The next time he woke slowly, drifting back up to an awareness of an unfamiliar place. He knew he had been almost awake before, that several dramatic things had happened while he was semi-conscious. He remembered flashes of intense searing pain between times of cool relief. Someone giving him water, and broth with just enough of a taste of meat to make him alternately sick and ravenous. He remembered trying to flex his hands and realizing his fingers were broken, held immobile by splints.
Now the skin of his chest felt tender and tight, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as he remembered. He heard movement from another room, the sound bouncing off stone walls, and voices, none familiar. He took a deep breath, keeping his eyes closed, and tasted the scent.
Sun-warmed air, incense caught in the folds of fabric, Kishan moss, though not nearby, strange groundling bodies, a trace of sweet oil, water running over stone and metal. And somewhere, the confusion of dust and sour/sweet scents that suggested a groundling city.
No Raksura. There was no scent of Fell, either. Kethel might have survived the fire weapons and the crash into the plain, but it wouldn’t have survived being found by groundlings. It was either dead in the ruin somewhere or escaped.
Now Moon just had to figure out where he was.
He managed to get his gummy eyes open to see a high domed ceiling of gray-white stone, embossed with half circles, all set with chips of glittering blue and green glass. Morning sunlight fell through stone-latticed windows just under the dome. Figured bronze lamps hung from the ceiling, and the walls had more embossed images, repeating square designs. The bed he lay on was a stone platform built against the wall, but it was made comfortable with cushions and drapes in soft fabrics.
Moon started to lever himself up and subsided with a gasp at the stab of pain in his chest. He squinted down at himself and saw a lot of patchy new bronze skin in between bandages and red healing burns; the muscles underneath ached with every movement. All the fingers on his right hand and three on the left had been broken and mostly healed straight. He moved his feet and added several toes to the total. He had a dim memory of digging his way out from under smothering debris, breaking his claws in the process. Nothing was broken or strained in his back; it didn’t hurt except for a dull ache. It meant his wing joins weren’t damaged, which was a relief.
Someone had taken care of him, obviously. Someone not a mentor. There was no scent of the simples that Merit or Lithe would have used, and he could tell he hadn’t been put in a healing sleep.
The door in the far wall was an open arch to another room. The groundlings he could hear were somewhere past it. He shifted to his scaled form.
Tried to shift. Nothing happened.
Moon tightened his throat against a snarl. They know what you are. He knew what being caught felt like. But it wasn’t Fell poison; there was no scale pattern on his skin. He tried again but it was like there was a wall between himself and whatever power he needed to shift, a wall he couldn’t break through. Kishan shamen, he thought. This had to be why the Fell were so wary of them.
He tried to sit up again and his arms trembled with the effort of pushing himself upright. There was no sign of whatever might have been left of his own clothes, or anything else he had been carrying with him.
Footsteps sounded from the other room and a small blue groundling appeared in the doorway. It squeaked with alarm at the sight of Moon awake and bolted out.
Moon waited, his heart pounding, but nothing drastic happened. There were agitated voices at a distance, then soft footsteps in the next room again. After a moment, the steps pattered hurriedly away, and it was quiet.
Moon climbed off the couch and stumbled, then lurched across the floor of polished stone tile toward the doorway. He leaned heavily on the doorframe, shocked at how weak he was.
This was room was larger, with stone-latticed windows taking up most of the far wall. A bench with cushions stood near the doorway, a drape of fine dark blue fabric across it. He picked it up and found it was a piece of clothing, a combination of a wrap skirt and pants. The idea of being trapped in groundling form and naked in front of strange people who were holding him prisoner was unnerving, so he got it on and tied at the waist. Then he headed for the windows.
Halfway there, he stepped in water and staggered sideways. There was a shallow round pool with a mosaiced bottom, apparently just there to decorate t
he room, since it was barely a fingerwidth deep. That’s a stupid thing to have, Moon thought, reaching the windows. He leaned against the stone lattice, shaking the water off his foot.
The openings were easily wide enough to fit his head through. In his shifted form, he might have to dislocate a shoulder to get the rest of his body out, though it would be hard to force even his folded wings through. But he couldn’t shift, so the point was academic at the moment.
The city spread out below was massive, the buildings made of golden stone, their domed roofs covered with carvings and painted designs, colorful banners hanging from open galleries and balconies. Broad streets wove between them, though most of the foot traffic was on the bridges that criss-crossed between the upper levels. He blinked and realized the large bridge curving away between distant buildings was actually an aqueduct, small boats sailing along it. He could spot the tower of a flying boat dock not far past it.
He had never seen a groundling city this massive in the east. This was what a city looked like that had never been destroyed by Fell or other predators, that had never had to move and leave half itself behind.
Behind him, quiet steps approached. Whoever it was seemed much calmer than the last groundling. He said, “What city is this?” He spoke Kedaic, matching his accent to the way Callumkal and Kalam had spoken it.
There was a moment of startled silence. Then the answer, “This is Kish-Karad, the western principal city and Imperial seat.”
Moon turned, leaning on the windowsill to stay upright.
The groundling who stood there was short and round, with roughly-textured gray skin and a boney head crest like a crown across the skull, dark feathery hair sprouting behind it. The long sleeveless robe was shaped to indicate at least two breasts, so he assumed she was female. Her features were broad, her eyes large and dark, and she had that look that groundlings sometimes got, as if she hadn’t expected him to be able to speak, at least intelligibly. Or just not expected him to speak first. Experience suggested it was mostly the former. Moon said, “Did you find any others like me?”
“Not like you,” she said, obviously still regrouping.
They weren’t dead in the wreckage. Moon didn’t let his relief show, though he broke out in a sweat all over.
She watched him carefully. “You’re a Raksura, correct?”
“You should know, since you’re keeping me from shifting.” If the Kishan had thought he was a Fell, they would never have let him live, much less healed him.
A sideways motion of her head seemed to concede the point. “It’s a precaution. You were badly injured and not aware enough to be reasoned with.” She added, “So what were you doing in a burning ruin that fell unexpectedly from the sky?”
At the city where the sunsailer had come to port, Kalam had told the Kish about the Hians; there had been plenty of time for that information to be carried deep into Kish via flying boat. “I was with Kalam of Kedmar, and Captain Rorra, helping them look for Callumkal, Master Scholar of the Conclave of the Janderan. Callumkal, and Delin-Evranlindel, a scholar from the Golden Isles, and two Raksura were stolen by Hians. They attacked Callumkal’s ship and killed our friends.”
He thought she had registered recognition at both Callumkal’s and Kalam’s names. She said, “Why were you helping Jandera?”
It was an odd question to ask, unless you already knew at least some of what had happened. “Because Callumkal is my friend.”
She hesitated, the feathery hair on her brows lifting and expanding. “He lives, then?”
Moon wondered who had claimed that Callumkal was dead. “When I last saw him. He was sick. The Hians gave him poison.” They seemed to be trading answers, so he added, “How long have I been here?”
She stood silent for what felt like a long moment, considering what Moon had said. “We found you fourteen days ago.”
Moon managed not to twitch. Fourteen days. Long enough for the others to find him, if they were alive? They had to be alive; he couldn’t handle the thought that they weren’t. But were they here or trapped up on the cloudwall? And he knew he had done as much as he could to get this groundling to think of him as a person, getting her to answer his questions, referencing Jandera friends; it was time to ask the hard question. “Am I a prisoner?”
Her brows moved again, in what Moon thought was uncertainty. “You are too injured to leave here, and there are others who have questions. I am Ceilinel, Chief Arcanist of the Imperial Conclave. Will you tell me your name?”
Not the most encouraging answer, or lack of answer. He had been right about her being a shaman, at least. “I’m Moon of Opal Night, consort to Jade, sister queen of the Court of Indigo Cloud.” He had to see if he could get a message to someone. He didn’t know where the others were and he couldn’t ask for a message to be carried to the Reaches, which might be under attack by Fell. He struggled to remember every groundling he knew who might owe him a favor and was still alive. Kalam had sent the survivors of his father’s expedition back to Kedmar to get help, and it would surely be easiest to reach them. “Can I send a message to—” Then the world slid sideways and his vision narrowed to a dark tunnel.
He was suddenly on the floor, doubled over, struggling to breathe.
Ceilinel stepped forward, demanding, “What is it? The burns?”
Moon took a deep breath and the cramp subsided. He managed to sit up. His voice came out as a harsh croak. “It’s been too long since I had food.” From bitter experience, he knew he could go without solid food for some time, but the cramps and spasms would become less sporadic and far more painful.
Ceilinel asked, “What do you eat?”
Moon snorted a bitter laugh at the idea that it might be a trick question. “The same things Kishan eat.”
Ceilinel’s steps moved rapidly away. Moon eased himself into a sitting position and leaned his head back against the cool stone of the wall. Returning footsteps and the scent of cooked meat startled him awake; he had slid into a light doze, still sitting up.
Ceilinel returned with three more groundlings. One carried a low table and the other two had trays of food. Ceilinel gestured to them to put it near Moon, who faked another cramp just to hide his relief. They could have refused him food to get what they wanted, though he had no idea what that was.
One of the groundlings set a cushion beside the table and backed away. Moon slid over to it, his legs shaking, and got his first good look at the food.
The trays held a bowl with clear broth and cut roots and cooked fish pieces, and plates with fried balls of a yellow grain with red specks, little round cakes, puffy square bread things with a sweet paste, and cooked meat pieces in a dark sauce. A lot of it was wrapped in big leaves and sprinkled with little white flowers, and it was scented of a dozen different spices. A cylindrical pot emitted the smoky fragrance of Kishan tea and there was a flask of plain water.
At the moment Moon didn’t care if it was all stuffed with Fell poison. He had been in the outer edges of Kish territory before, and some of this was familiar; the grain had been a staple for the Jandera on the expedition. He drank the tea first, then started on the food. He made himself eat slowly and use his best groundlings-are-watching-youeat manners, so he wouldn’t make himself sick or terrify the Kishan. Except for Ceilinel, they had retreated to the archway, watching with wary curiosity. Two were the same species as Ceilinel, but smaller, and one was the blue one, who had a curly mass of silvery hair on its head and very large, expressive eyes. They seemed to have every expectation that Moon would do something terrible, and it was a relief when Ceilinel gestured them out of the room.
She gave him time to eat half the food, then said, “Would you tell me how you came to be in the wreckage of that ruin, or great machine, whatever it was?”
He still wasn’t certain how much she knew, if she was testing him. But calling it a “great machine” rather than just a strange stone-metal thing that had inexplicably fallen from the sky meant she knew more than she had implied.
“The Hians stole an old weapon from the foundation builder city that Callumkal wanted to explore. They wanted to use it to kill Fell, but it also killed Jandera and Raksura. And Hians. They knew that, and didn’t care. They put it in an old forerunner ruin to make it work. We tried to stop them.” He kept the explanation short. Ceilinel might be trying to confirm someone else’s story, or maybe catch Moon in a lie. He wanted to ask about Niran’s wind-ship, but he didn’t want to betray its existence if the Kish didn’t already know about it. “Do Kalam and Rorra, or Delin, know I’m here?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But the Jandera who speak for Kedmar in the Imperial councils do.” She watched him for another moment. “I’ve been told consorts never leave Raksuran colonies.”
She had used the correct Kedaic word for colony, not “hive” or anything else Moon had heard. It fed that spark of hope. She had spoken to somebody who knew about Raksura; it didn’t necessarily mean it was Delin or Rorra or Kalam, it could have been some Kishan scholar Moon had never met. He said, “Not often. But consorts travel with their queens as . . .” He wasn’t sure about the multiple meanings of the word he wanted in Kedaic, so settled for Altanic. “ . . . envoys.” The food was already making him feel less weak, making it easier to think. It wasn’t a good idea to lie, since he had no idea how much Ceilinel knew. Which was a problem since Moon was much better at lying than telling the truth. “I was raised outside a colony, so I’ve traveled more than most consorts.” Putting it that way sounded better than saying he had been what a Raksuran court would call a feral solitary for most of his life.
“What makes consorts so . . . in need of protection? Is it because you’re male?”
Moon looked up at her. Two turns ago he wouldn’t have been able to answer this question. “Because we carry the court’s bloodline.”
Ceilinel said nothing, though Moon could feel her watching as he cleared the last plate of little cakes. She said, “Is that enough food?”
