by Martha Wells
Inside he saw the tendril had broken through the window on the opposite side and wrapped around a tall Janderan. It tried to drag him out the narrow opening, a process that would surely tear him apart. Rorra held on to him while frantically stabbing at the tendril with a pointed navigation instrument. Moon shoved the window open, slithered inside, and slammed past Rorra. He jammed himself in between the desperate Janderan and the broken window, and bit into the tendril. It tasted terrible, but he jerked and twisted, ripping into it.
Rorra wrapped her arms around the Janderan and yanked backward. Moon braced his legs against the frame of the broken window and pushed.
The tendril gave way and they all fell away from the window to land on the cabin floor. Rorra, still holding on to the gasping Janderan, scrambled back, dragging him with her. More tendrils shoved into the room, waving angrily, blocking the way to the door. Moon pushed Rorra and the Janderan back into a corner and braced himself in front of them.
Then the tendrils all flinched in unison, a sudden sharp movement. They jerked backward out of the window and disappeared from view. Moon waited tensely, but they didn’t reappear. “What happened?” Rorra whispered hoarsely.
Moon figured that Stone had happened. He eased to his feet cautiously and looked out the window. Below on the deck, a few confused Kishan ran around with their fire weapons, but no one was shooting at anything. The warriors and Jade perched up on the railing looking down. Moon spotted Stone, in his groundling form, casually sling himself back over the railing. Jade turned, saw Moon, and waved an all-clear.
“It’s gone now.” Moon waved back and crouched down to help the Janderan sit up.
“It?” Rorra got her boots under her and rolled into a sitting position. “There was only one?”
“I think so. I think most of it was on the bottom of the boat,” Moon told her. He was worried about the Janderan. There were light gray circles under his eyes and around his mouth, standing out against the dark brown of his skin. It wasn’t normal and it couldn’t mean anything good. Moon untangled the tendril fragment still around the man’s waist and helped Rorra hold him upright. He was gasping for air and it was usually easier to breathe while sitting up. Rorra asked him anxiously, “Magrim, are you hurt badly? Your ribs, your chest?”
Magrim moved his head uncertainly. “I’m—Ribs feel broken . . .” He grabbed Moon’s arm and said in Altanic, “Thank you, thank you.”
Rorra said, “Yes, thank you.” She added, a little wryly, “Now I know why your queen brought you.”
Her communication scent was strong, but knowing what it was and that it was there made it much easier to ignore. And some groundlings would have found a way to interpret the whole thing as Moon helping the creature try to eat them, so he appreciated Rorra and Magrim’s clear-headed view of the situation. He said, “You’re welcome.”
Callumkal burst through the door, exclaiming in alarm, and Moon moved away so he could get to Magrim.
Kalam stood in the doorway, asking breathlessly, “Is everyone all right in here?”
“Magrim might need a healer,” Moon told him.
“I’ll get help,” Kalam said, and ducked back out the doorway.
Moon followed him down the interior passage and out to the deck. Toward the stern, the warriors gathered around Jade, and the Kishan were at the rail now, aiming their weapons toward the ground. The man that Jade and Balm had rescued was on his feet, being helped to a hatchway by a Janderi woman. Chime and Delin had come out of the hatchway further down, and looked bewildered by the confusion. The wind held a fading trace of the creature’s predator musk, the rotted-flesh scent that had been masked by the offal of their kills. Moon asked, “Was anyone else hurt?”
“Not badly,” Kalam said, waving to a woman midway down the deck. “We’re doing a count now, to make sure everyone’s still . . . here.”
The Janderan woman strode toward them, a heavy bag over her shoulder that Moon assumed carried her healing simples and supplies. Kalam told her hurriedly, “Serlam, it’s Magrim, in the steering cabin. He may be injured.”
“It squeezed him around here,” Moon added, motioning to his rib cage.
As Serlam headed inside, Vendoin reached them. She said, “We saw Stone—How did he do that? Can you all do that?”
It sounded like the emergency had caused Stone to give up his effort to keep the size of his winged form a secret. “You mean . . .” Moon prompted, just in case he was wrong.
“With wings he’s almost as large as a small major kethel,” Vendoin said. He couldn’t read her expression but she seemed more awed than agitated.
“It was amazing,” Kalam said, turning to Moon. “The predator was all around us, reaching for us, and he leapt up, and changed, and tore it right from the ship—”
Vendoin persisted, “The rest of you, can you do that?”
“No, it’s because he’s so old,” Moon told her. “Our other forms get larger as we get older. No one else here is anywhere near as old as he is. Delin knows all about it.”
“Ah.” Vendoin seemed unsatisfied with the explanation. She hesitated, but someone shouted for Kalam, and Moon took the opportunity to escape, following him down the deck and heading over to where Jade and Stone waited near the rail.
Looking down, Moon spotted the remnants of the predator, scattered on the tall grasses of the wetlands they were passing over. There was a broad river visible through the trees some small distance away, and the flying boat’s course paralleled it. He didn’t see any groundling bodies, so hopefully Kalam was right and no one had been flung overboard. “Do we know what that was?” he asked them.
Stone shrugged. “There was a small shallow lake bed below us, a little too round, no streams feeding it. I think that was its burrow.”
“It must have felt the boat’s shadow pass over it.” Jade’s spines and tail still moved restlessly. “Callumkal said he’d tell them to fly higher until we get past this area.” Her voice lower, she added, “And from now on I’m going to have the warriors fly the offal away from the boat before they drop it.”
Moon admitted it was probably a good idea.
Chime moved to the railing beside Moon and peered down. “I’m glad I missed that.”
Jade sent Song and River up to the top of the boat to keep watch, and Moon and the others stayed out on deck, waiting for the flying boat to clear this stretch of country and move over the sparse forests closer to the river.
Soon, Callumkal came out on deck to tell Jade, “I wish to thank you. No one aboard was killed or badly injured and this is solely due to your intervention.”
Jade clearly hadn’t expected such fervent gratitude. Moon figured she was probably still thinking about the offal and the possibility that it had attracted the creature’s attention. She managed, “I’m glad none of you were badly hurt.”
Callumkal turned to Moon. “Rorra told me what you did for Magrim. He would have been torn to pieces without your help.”
It was Moon’s turn to feel uncomfortable, but Callumkal had already turned to stride off down the deck.
Over the next few days, things grew steadily better between the Raksura and the crew. Moon and the others kept careful watch and spotted a couple more possible nesting sites for large ground predators, and directed the boat to steer wide of them. They were also able to help when it came time to refill the boat’s large water tanks. Bramble and Stone managed to have conversations with various Kishan, and Rorra and the recovering Magrim spoke easily to them. And, oddly, Kalam, who seemed too shy to talk much himself, made sure to invite the Raksura to sit in the common room or to share meals with them or to see how various parts of the flying boat worked. He even demonstrated the flying packs for them, which were powered by the same moss that provided the lift for the boat.
There were no more horrified or fearful looks, and Moon noticed there was no more reluctance to get close when he passed crew members in a corridor. Moon felt the Kishan had at least gone from thinking of them as �
�those Raksura” to “our Raksura.”
The fourth day after the attack, Moon was lying out on the stern deck with Stone. Song, Root, and Chime were back against the nearest cabin wall, napping, and Jade and the others were inside. The terrain below was flattening out as they neared the coast, grassy plains with the occasional lake or stream or rocky outcrop, and a few stretches of low forest.
Moon heard steps through the soft material of the deck and sat up and stretched, thinking it was Jade. But it was Bramble, with Kalam, Magrim, and the other navigator, Esankel, who was one of the Janderi.
“Won’t we be bothering them?” Esankel was asking Bramble cautiously.
“Oh no, it’s fine, come and sit down.” Bramble plopped down on the deck next to Moon.
Kalam hesitated a little, then leaned on the railing nearby. Magrim, who still had a wrap around his cracked ribs, settled down on the deck with Esankel’s help, and she sat next to him.
“Are you going to be a scholar too?” Bramble asked Kalam, apparently continuing a conversation. “Is that why you’re here with your father?”
“I don’t know.” Kalam looked out into the distance. “I’ve been studying the foundation builders, and the water builders, and some of the others, since I was very young, and it’s interesting.”
Moon thought that was the least enthusiastic response possible. That opinion seemed to be shared, because Bramble asked, “What about your mother?”
“Jandera only have one primary parent,” Kalam explained. “I have several secondary parents, and they’re all scholars too.”
Esankel said, “You could be a navigator. You’re good with the maps.”
“Or an explorer, like Scholar Delin,” Magrim added.
“I could,” Kalam agreed, clearly being polite. He asked Bramble, “Was your job decided for you by your parent?”
His eyes still closed, Stone snorted. “Bramble does what she wants.”
“I do not.” Bramble nudged his ankle. She told Kalam, “It’s not really like that with us. When you have a clutch, you’re very happy about it, and you’re close to them, of course. But the teachers raise them, and you don’t tell them what to do once they’re out of the nurseries. The queens do that.”
Kalam took all this in like it wasn’t a way of living that he had ever considered. Esankel and Magrim were listening closely as well. Kalam asked, “Then how do you decide what role to play in your society?”
“If you’re an Arbora, you just decide.” Bramble shrugged. “You can try being a teacher or a hunter or a soldier, and change your mind if you don’t like it. For Arbora, the only caste you have to be born into is mentor, like Merit. And you don’t have to be a mentor if you really don’t want to, though I think it’s pretty rare for someone to not want to be one.”
Kalam turned to Moon. “Is it like that with you?”
“No, not for consorts, or queens. Or warriors,” Moon told him.
“If you could be anything you wanted, what would you be?” Kalam asked.
Moon thought it over for a moment, watching a flock of brightly colored birds swerve away from the flying boat. “A hunter.” All of the Arbora hunters but Bramble were home with their clutches, and not traveling on flying boats having to make hard decisions.
Bramble gave him a sympathetic nudge. Stone muttered, “Ingrate.”
Ignoring that, Moon asked Kalam, “What do you want to be?”
Kalam hesitated again, then smiled down at Moon. “I would like to stay in Kedmar and build places for people to live. Finding new ways to use the shape-moss, and maybe ways to build out onto the old water platforms in Kedmar bay.”
“That’s a good job,” Magrim said, wincing a little as he stretched. “Surely your father would approve.”
“I’d have to ask him first,” Kalam said, but it sounded noncommittal, as if he was hoping everyone dropped the subject as fast as possible.
Moon did, and was glad when the conversation wandered into a comparison of various Kishan family structures, and Bramble trying to explain how she was related to Jade via a long list of clutchmates and half-clutchmates and cross-clutchmates.
That night, Kalam invited them to sit in the common room after the Kishan had eaten, and Moon ended up in a corner with a few of the others, listening to Vendoin and Callumkal argue politely about the city.
Jade sat on the padded bench next to Stone, her tail curled up around her legs. Moon was on the floor, leaning against the bench, Chime next to him with Bramble sprawled on her stomach. Delin, Kalam, and Rorra sat nearby, listening too, though most of Delin’s attention was on the sketch he was making. Rorra’s scent wasn’t noticeable, and Moon suspected that the more relaxed she became around them, the less it would appear.
They were all drinking the clear liquid the Kishan preferred in the evening. It was supposed to be an intoxicant, but the only groundling drug Moon had encountered that had any effect on Raksura was Fell poison, and no one would ever consider drinking it for fun. But the Kishan liquor did have a pleasant taste, vaguely reminiscent of the big pomegranates that grew in the upper Abascene.
“I appreciate all your arguments but I still think we will find it is the foundation builders,” Vendoin was saying to Callumkal.
“If you would share your reasons for that, perhaps I would agree with you.” Callumkal’s tone was wry.
Vendoin made a throwaway gesture. “It is in the same style as the other ruins we have found. Even the tile with the image of the forerunner is similar.”
“Why do you want it to be forerunner?” Moon had to ask Callumkal. “What are you hoping to find?”
“Well. I hope not to find a tremendously dangerous trapped predator, as you did.” Callumkal paused to gather his thoughts. “There are many other species who have lived where we live now, over thousands of turns. This is clear to anyone who steps outside their own doorway. Many of them surely earned their own destruction, like the flying island races who destroyed each other in their wars, the Tsargaren tower people, and the Varirath to the west, or the island builders to the south. Many others have left behind little or nothing to tell us who they were or why they fought. Others are still here, in some other guise, with their origins forgotten. There are others who should still be here. Why are they gone? How could they fade away and leave no sign of the cause? Will their fate befall us? Those questions occupy me.”
“Those questions are why I study the present,” Delin said, not looking up from his drawing. “I hope to leave the knowledge to be passed down to others.”
Callumkal made a gesture of agreement. “This city may be a sign that the forerunners and the foundation builders existed at the same time, that they knew of each other and interacted. Which could provide clues to why each one disappeared.” He said to Moon, “If the forerunners truly are your ancestors, then perhaps the foundation builders have descendants as well. There are many who believe the Janderan and Janderi are descended from them.”
“Even with our flying ships, distances defeat us.” Vendoin stared absently at the floor, lost in thought. “There may be gatherings of scholars to the far west, or far around the ocean, who have these answers already.”
Chime had been listening intently, leaning forward to follow the discussion. “Or who have the missing pieces to answer your questions, and you have theirs,” he said.
“Just so,” Callumkal agreed. “Perhaps this city will provide some answers, perhaps it won’t. But I also feel it is worth seeing the interior for its own sake.” He eyed Vendoin. “To settle our debate about its origins, for one thing.”
Vendoin shook off her reverie and signaled agreement, her mouth folding up into an approximation of the Janderan’s smile.
Her head propped on her hand, Bramble said thoughtfully, “I think we need to carve our history into the colony tree, to make sure it’s still there even if something happens to the books. There are a lot of empty walls in the lower levels. I’ll get started on that when I get back.”
“An
d how long will the project take you?” Vendoin asked, intrigued.
Bramble shrugged. “If the others help, maybe about a month.”
“She isn’t joking,” Jade said, probably to stave off any comments that they might have to take offense to. “The Arbora are very . . . efficient.”
She was right. Moon thought the enthusiasm for a new major carving project would already be high; once Bramble explained why she wanted to do it, it would probably take over all the castes.
Stone, obviously thinking along the same lines as Moon, sighed. “It’ll be the damn drains all over again.”
Eyes narrowed as she planned the carving, Bramble said, “I’ll include a Raksuran-Altanic translation.”
Callumkal told Bramble seriously, “You should do this. Future generations of scholars will praise your name.”
The Court of Opal Night, in the Western Reaches
Lithe sat bolt upright, her heart ice inside her chest and a scream trapped in her throat. She knew she was in her bower, that her body lay in the comforting shell of the hanging bed, the chamber softly lit by the flowers she had spelled to glow. But her mind was trapped in a battle with a Fell flight as it attacked the Reaches.
It wasn’t real, she told herself, her heart pounding. Curled next to her, eyes still closed, Reed’s throat worked as if she struggled to speak. Lithe pressed her hand to Reed’s forehead and concentrated briefly, the method used to rouse someone from a too-deep healing sleep. Reed snapped awake and blurted, “Fell. There were Fell—”
“You saw it?” Lithe demanded. “It wasn’t just me?”
“Fell attacking the Reaches.” Reed struggled to untangle herself from the blanket. “Where—Not here. The east?”
“I think so.” Lithe slung herself over the side of the bed and landed on the floor as Reed flung cushions aside. She found her shirt by tripping on it in her lunge to the doorway, stopped to drag it on, and ran out into the passage.
