by Martha Wells
They found Stone and the others waiting at the edge of the village with the Kek who had volunteered to go along. Moon handed over the pack he carried to Stone, while Chime and Sand passed out the others. “Pearl told Floret she could go with you.”
“Good,” Stone said, opening the pack’s flap to check the contents. The packs contained skins for water, some dried meat and bread, flints, a coil of rope, and some other items that would come in handy in emergencies. One of the packs was heavier than the others and glowing a little. It contained rocks spelled by the mentors to emit light, and Stone took charge of it. He slung it over his shoulder and said, “We’ll give it a day, unless we pick up their trail.”
The four Kek plant hunters who would be going along carried bags woven out of vines and braided grasses. They also had some sharpened sticks that could be weapons or just useful for poking at plants. They stood near the warriors, clearly anxious to get started.
Moon told the warriors, “Be careful.”
Stone added, “And don’t get distracted. Root, I’m mainly talking to you.”
“Hah, he’s joking,” Root told the others. “I’m never distracted when we’re doing something important. Really,” he added, as Song flicked her spines and eyed him deliberately.
“You bring this on yourself, Root,” Chime said, and Stone cut off the conversation by shifting to his winged form.
Moon stepped back. In the green twilight, the odd blurring when he tried to look at Stone directly was worse. As a line-grandfather, Stone’s winged form had differences other than size, though they weren’t always apparent. He never spoke in his winged form, and Moon wasn’t sure if he could, and didn’t like to ask.
It didn’t seem to frighten the Kek. One of them lifted his arms and waved, and Stone wrapped a clawed hand around him and lifted him to his shoulder. Then Stone leapt upward and landed on the arch of the nearest root. Vine, Sage, and Song picked up the other three Kek and all the warriors leapt to follow Stone.
Watching the group move away through the dark foliage, Chime sighed. “I hope they find the Kek, but …”
Moon settled his spines. The chances were that Stone and the others would find nothing. The Kek who had gathered to watch the group leave seemed to be equally dispirited. Moon felt they should leave them to their grief. He tugged on Chime’s wrist. “Let’s go.”
When they reached the upper section of the tree, Sand split off to rejoin the warriors who patrolled the clearing under the colony tree’s canopy, and Moon and Chime went on inside to the greeting hall. This was the heart of the colony tree, the first thing visitors saw. Two open stairways criss-crossed up the far wall, below the balconies and the round doorways opening into the higher levels, and the big spiral of the central well. The floor was inlaid with polished shell, and a narrow stream of water fell from a channel high in the wall to collect in a pool in the floor. There seemed to be more warriors than usual in the upper level balconies and more Arbora lingering around the pool and the stairway down to the teachers’ hall, at least for this time of day. They were hanging around in hope of news, probably.
Balm was waiting for them there in her groundling form. Moon landed and she said immediately, “Nothing’s happened. Heart and Bell are with her.”
Moon let out the breath he didn’t know he had been holding and shifted to his groundling form so Balm didn’t have to shift to her winged form. He was going to have to learn to relax about this or he wasn’t going to live to see the clutch. Balm continued, “Jade wanted me to find you and tell you she’s sorry.”
Chime had shifted and was already busy checking his feet for mud and leaf mold. He frowned at Balm. “Sorry about what?”
“Nothing, Jade’s mad because she’s bored and she wanted to go with Stone,” Moon told him. He told Balm, “She’s not sorry.”
“No, of course not.” Balm seemed to feel that should be obvious. “But she wanted me to tell you that anyway.”
Moon wondered how consorts like Ember handled these displays of temper. Probably by being conciliatory and solicitous, two things which would irritate the piss out of Jade even if she wasn’t carrying five squirming babies in her stomach.
Chime said, “What about a new book? Blossom said Needle found one in the library that she’s been re-copying that no one’s read in a long time. It’s about an expedition that Solace and Sable supposedly took to the mountains on the far edge of the grass plains, where there were groundlings who hung from branches and lived inside fruit.”
“Inside fruit?” Moon repeated. Over the past turn, the teachers had been actively trading other courts for books, and so had been digging out damaged and long-forgotten volumes from Indigo Cloud’s library and copying them. It had led to some interesting finds.
Skeptical, Balm said, “Solace and Sable got around, for a sister queen and her consort.”
“That’s why I said ‘supposedly,’ “Chime said.” I know they did make several trade alliances, but I think some of their Arbora just had overactive imaginations and liked to write travelogues. But Needle said it’s a good story.”
Balm flicked her spines in acknowledgement. “Go ahead and bring whatever Needle has gotten re-copied up to the bower. Maybe we can get Jade interested in it tonight.”
Chime headed off to the stairs down to the teachers’ hall. Balm considered Moon. “You look tired.”
Moon shook his head. “I’m thinking about groundlings living in fruit.”
Balm’s lips twitched in a smile. Then she tilted her head toward the outer entrance. “They’ll be all right with Stone.”
“I know.” Moon realized his shoulders were still tense, as if he was holding his wings half-extended. Except he didn’t have wings at the moment. He could use a distraction too. Hopefully the fruit-dwelling groundling story was as interesting as it was made out to be.
Fortunately, the story was as good as Needle had said. Chime read the first re-copied section aloud in Jade’s bower, to an audience of Jade, Moon, Balm, Heart, Merit, and Bell, and Moon suspected this would be the first of many readings, since everyone in the colony was going to want to hear this at some point. There was enough of it that they didn’t finish until late into the night.
Bell went back to the nurseries to take a turn watching the children, but Jade didn’t make any sign that she wanted privacy, so the others stayed. She mainly seemed to want to grumble occasionally and listen to them talk, but she was in a better mood.
Moon wished he was in a better mood. He had asked the soldiers on watch in the greeting hall to let him know if Stone and the hunting party returned. Though it was likely that since they hadn’t reappeared by sunset, they wouldn’t be back until dawn. He still didn’t expect to get much rest. And when Balm, Chime, Heart, and Merit all finally curled up on various cushions and furs and fell asleep, Moon was still wide awake.
He thought Jade had drifted off as well, leaning back against a pile of cushions. The hanging bed was no longer comfortable for her, so they used the furs and cushions on the floor that were normally a spot for naps during the day. Then Jade stirred and said, “Come here.”
Moon shook his head. “No sex. You decided, no more babies ever.”
Jade cocked a brow, amused. “Just come here.”
He got up and circled around the cups, cushions, and deeply breathing bodies to sit beside Jade. She wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him in, and he settled against the warmth of her scales, softer in her Arbora form. Queens and female Arbora had the ability to control their fertility, so sex without babies wasn’t an issue, but Jade hadn’t been much interested since she had stopped being able to shift. And actually Moon had been too nervous to be interested, with Jade or Chime or anyone else. She said, “Are you really that worried about the clutch?”
“Yes.” He wanted to ask why aren’t you? but knew it would just start an argument. And it was only frustration; he knew why Jade wasn’t as concerned. She was a queen and had been raised from birth with the knowledge that
she was responsible for the entire court’s wellbeing. Every queen was, even the ones who stayed daughter queens all their days. Adding five more tiny lives to the hundreds of others just wasn’t that much of a change. Except these five lives came with a great deal of physical discomfort.
The teachers selected to take care of the clutch would do a lot of the work, but the consorts were supposed to make certain a royal clutch knew how to be royal Aeriat. Moon was still vague on the idea of how to be a royal Aeriat; he had no idea how he was supposed to guide five babies. He was hoping a little that they ended up with five warriors, but everyone seemed to think that was unlikely. “I’m worried I won’t know how to raise them, among other things.”
Jade’s sigh stirred his hair. “Well. And there aren’t any other consorts to talk to. Besides Stone. And poor sweet Ember, who’s useless.”
Moon tugged on her frill. “He’s not useless.” Ember was intelligent and knew a great deal about the relationships, tensions, and trade agreements between the courts of the Reaches, just from growing up listening to the other consorts and the queens of Emerald Twilight. Moon wasn’t sure if his birthqueen Tempest had been aware just how much knowledge Ember had managed to soak up or if it was intended to be part of the apology for causing Indigo Cloud unintended trouble. It helped that Pearl was actually willing to listen objectively to Ember, who came without all the turns of past disagreements and bitter arguments of Indigo Cloud.
Jade snorted. “He’s useless for this.”
That was true. Ember hadn’t done this yet and had no real advice. “Stone thinks this is easy.” Stone found Moon’s anxiety amusing. And Moon had just realized the fact that Stone hadn’t made any comment to that effect when Moon had refused to go with the hunting party had just made him more anxious. If Stone, who considered this process so simple, thought it was a good idea for Moon to stay near Jade, that meant that problems were a possibility.
“He would,” Jade said, dryly. “Stone fathered so many clutches, it’s all routine to him.”
At the moment, Moon couldn’t imagine this being routine. If he had been raised inside a court, he knew it would be different. He would have been around fledglings all his life, have watched what the teachers did so much it would have been second nature when the clutch came. “I just … There’s nothing I can do to help now, and I don’t know if I know enough to do what I’m supposed to do later.”
Jade said, “Telling you that everything will be fine is useless, so I’ll just say to try to remember that it won’t be too much longer. Then you can stop worrying about me and just worry about raising the clutch.”
Moon leaned back to look at her. “That’s not helpful.”
“Nothing is going to be helpful right now,” Jade said. “So go to sleep. No, wait, help me up because I have to piss again, then go to sleep.”
Sadly, she was probably right. Moon climbed to his feet, then hauled Jade to hers.
Moon woke stretched out on a fur next to Jade, who was sprawled half on her side with a cushion against her back. He had slept erratically and was so bleary it took him a moment to realize Chime was crouched beside him with a couple of female Arbora leaning over his shoulders. “What?” Moon croaked.
“They’re back,” Chime whispered.
Moon sat up. The two Arbora were soldiers who often guarded the greeting hall, Sprout and Ginger. Ginger added, “Floret came in to tell Pearl, but she said Stone wanted to talk to you.”
“So they’re all right?” Moon asked, rubbing his face to wake himself up. Heart and Merit were gone, and Balm was awake, sitting beside the hearth and adding tea to a pot. “Where are they?”
“The Kek village,” Sprout said. “Floret was in a hurry, didn’t say what happened, but she asked for a mentor to go down as soon as possible.”
Jade sat up on her elbow and ordered, “Get down there and find out what happened.”
Moon waited only long enough to hear that Merit had gone to get his simples and the other things he needed for healing and that Floret meant to carry him down to the village as soon as he was ready. Then Moon and Chime went out through the knothole and flew down to the forest floor.
The early morning air was just cool enough to finish waking Moon up. The ever-present dampness had intensified into a light rain at some point earlier, and droplets were caught in the leaves and in the platforms, dripping on his scales. Chime said, “If one of the warriors was hurt, they would have brought them straight into the colony to the mentors. It must be one of the Kek.”
It meant the hunt must have been successful after all and Stone had found at least one of the Kek, wounded but alive. It was a much better outcome than Moon had expected.
Moon landed on a root first, squinting to see in the green light. He spotted Kek moving among the waving stalks of ferns, bowl grass, and other foliage at the edge of the village. He jumped down to the mossy ground, Chime with him. Someone called to him in Raksuran, and Moon followed the voice through stands of rushes, under another arching root, and out to a small area of open ground.
Root stood there, but he wasn’t the first thing Moon noticed.
Floating above the moss was a giant leaf, light green and gracefully curved, a good fifty paces across and almost as wide. It took a long moment of staring before Moon realized it was a kind of flying boat.
Moon moved closer, caught between admiration and bewilderment. It hovered above the ground, high enough that he could have walked under it without ducking. This close he could see it really was a leaf, and not just made to look like one. The surface was plant fiber with striated veins, and it had clearly grown into this shape. The upper section tented up like a canopy, with long narrow windows all along the midsection. They were covered with something transparent but flexible that clearly wasn’t glass. There were puffy mushroom things studding the bottom, and a little moss was growing on it. It smelled like a strange combination of bruised leaves and something sweet, like a peeled fruit.
“We found what happened to the Kek,” Root announced. “And,” he waved a hand toward the leaf, “That. We can’t figure out how to fly it. We just sort of pushed it and pulled it and it came along with us.”
“But … What … Why …” Chime’s spines flicked in a complex signal of confusion and irritation. Moon sympathized. He was feeling much the same. Chime finished, “Where is everybody?”
Root said, “Stone is in the village, the others are standing guard around us. Is a mentor coming?”
“Floret’s bringing Merit,” Moon said. “Who’s hurt? The Kek? Does this belong to them?” The leaf boat did look like something the Kek might have come up with, if the Kek had made flying boats. But Moon had never seen any hint of anything like this near the village before.
“No, the Kek were dead, we were too late, but the groundlings who were in this thing were still alive,” Root said. At Moon’s spine twitch indicating that his patience was about to abruptly run out, Root added, “We flew out to where the Kek had already searched and moved on from there. It was getting near sunset, we were about to stop and camp for the night, when Stone caught a scent he thought was groundling blood. We followed it, and then came onto a trail through a bunch of purplevine clusters, where it looked like something had rolled through and crushed them. It was almost dark by that point but we managed to follow the trail to that thing.” He jerked his tail toward the leaf boat. “The three Kek were there, but they’d been killed.”
“By predators?” Chime asked, still sounding confused. “After the injured groundlings?”
“No. Stone thinks whatever got them got the groundlings too. I think that’s what he thinks.” Root’s spines flicked in frustration. “Better let Stone tell you.”
Root led them away from the leaf and toward the interior of the village. They went around some clumps of tall ferns, under a few of the hanging huts, and toward a raised area. It was sheltered by two tall stands of willowy reeds that had been trained to grow in an arch and then woven together. The floor of
the raised area was made of dried rushes that had been pounded down and then overlaid with grass mats. Several dozen Kek surrounded it at a distance, murmuring together worriedly. As Root approached with Moon and Chime, they waved stick-like fingers and made urgent gestures toward the shelter. Root said, “There he is. I’ve got to get back.”
The shadowy green light was even dimmer in this part of the village, but as they drew closer to the shelter Moon saw there were people inside. Stone in groundling form and a few Kek, all leaning over several bundled forms.
Moon stepped up onto the pounded rush floor. There were five shapes lying on the mats in the dimly lit interior, and he could hear rough breathing. Small tent-covers of pounded leaves lay over the bodies, probably to help shield them from insects. Stone glanced up. “Mentor?”
“Merit’s coming,” Moon said. “What kind of groundlings are they?”
Stone carefully moved the tent-cover away from the nearest body. All Moon could see at first was a mane of gray hair, and he stepped closer. The face was turned to the side, and the skin was smooth and silvery, not scaled or furred.
Stone lifted the cover a little further. “They’re all wounded like this, with darts.” The groundling wore brief clothing, just a few straps with loops and clips probably meant to hold tools. Its hands were partially webbed, and there were blunt gray claws on the ends of each finger. Moon hissed when he spotted the darts. There were three of them, light green, imbedded in the skin above the right hip. The flesh around them was swollen and dark.
Stone carefully lowered the cover back into place. “We left the darts in because we didn’t have anything to stop the bleeding.” He gestured to the others. “The rest are a different species.” One of the Kek lifted another cover and Moon leaned over to see. The other groundling had dark gray skin, with a waxy texture to it, and something around its head that wasn’t hair.
Chime eased forward to look. Moon sat on his heels, the disemboweling claws on his feet sinking into the grass mats. Stone had probably been right to leave the darts in and wait for a mentor. Trying to help wounded members of an unfamiliar species was always chancy, and more so when they weren’t conscious enough to tell you what not to do.
