by Martha Wells
Indigo watched Cloud lie on the furs listening to whatever story was being read, absently carding his fingers through the frills of whichever fledgling was sitting with him. When he had gone with Paragon to the nurseries, the fledglings and young Arbora had taken to Cloud completely. A young adult consort who wanted to play with them while Cinnabar was occupied with Ruby must have seemed like the best gift of the turn.
And Cloud watched Indigo. Watched her talk and laugh with the Arbora and the warriors, watched the female warrior fledglings hang on her every word. Indigo had always had a good disposition and Cerise had worried a little that she might not be aggressive enough. This worry had vanished when Indigo was a fledgling and they had been out watching the Arbora hunt one day. A giant gutripper had dropped down from above and Indigo had gone for its face without hesitation, clawing at its nearest eye and giving the Arbora a chance to run and Cerise an opening to go for the creature’s throat. It had turned out Indigo was plenty aggressive; she just saved it up until it was needed. But Cloud seemed to be admiring her more for her patience with the fledglings and her ease with the Arbora and other members of the court.
In frustration, Cerise asked Paragon, “So what does he have to say for himself? Has he shown any interest in her?”
They were in her bower, sitting on the furs near the hearth, having a last cup of tea for the evening. Paragon said, “No, but he doesn’t talk much about anything. He’s very cautious.”
“Cautious of what?”
“Of us. He listens when the others talk, but doesn’t say much himself. Of course, Bright and Sunrise are barely more than fledglings, and Cinnabar doesn’t have anything in his head these days except babies and Ruby, so our conversation isn’t exactly wide-ranging. Cloud plays with the fledglings and enjoys the Arbora’s company, but he’s wary of us.” Paragon set the teapot aside. It was a dark blue glaze, swirled through with hints of red and gold. “I don’t think the other consorts at Emerald Twilight treated him very well. I had a talk with Lapis and the other warriors who were with Indigo, and they said they saw some clear signs of dislike between Cloud and the other queens’ consorts.”
Cerise clicked her claws on her cup, thinking it over. “Is he a troublemaker?” She wasn’t certain if she wanted that to be the case or not. If Indigo and Cloud had no real interest in each other, if Indigo’s attraction had been a passing one caused by the drama of their situation which had now been squelched by Cloud’s admission that he didn’t want her, this would all be so much easier to resolve. But she had to admit, the idea of Indigo securing such a spirited young consort wasn’t unattractive.
“If he is, he’s not going to trouble-make here,” Paragon said repressively. Cerise’s birthqueen had told her that you could always tell which one was going to turn out to be a first consort by how annoyed they were by other consorts and male warriors. Paragon was normally easygoing, but he didn’t like to see fighting among consorts or their warrior favorites and he was perfectly capable of putting an immediate stop to it if it occurred. “No, I suspect they just all got off on the wrong wingbeat, probably in part due to his queen’s influence. And he’s told us a little about his birthcourt; it was small and informal. Rustic compared to Emerald Twilight. And he was the only consort from a mixed clutch, with a queen and three female warriors. He spent a great deal of time tagging along with them as a fledgling and I imagine they toughened him up quite a bit. He’s reticent, but not shy or timid.”
Cerise sighed wearily. Not shy or timid, and not likely to take slights well, or to know how to respond with anything but a slap to the head, like a female warrior. If Argent had treated him well, the situation in the consorts’ quarters would have probably settled down eventually. But with Argent openly showing her displeasure with her consort, it would have just made everything so much worse.
It didn’t seem like Cloud was likely to be a bad consort. With a queen who was more understanding, and a court that wasn’t so formal and competitive, he would probably be perfectly happy. It was just a coincidence that Indigo and the court of Umber Shadow fit that description so well.
Watching her expression, Paragon said, “The conflict with Emerald Twilight would be more easily resolved if he’s handed back to Sunset Water.”
Cerise eyed him. “You think Indigo has decided that she doesn’t want him?” She had certainly shown little sign of it in the past days.
Paragon snorted and reached for the teapot. “I think Indigo wants him more than she wants to breathe.”
Except for Cloud’s presence, everything continued on much as usual. Cerise was hoping the five warriors who had carried the message to Sunset Water would return on the eleventh day, and it was a relief that at mid-afternoon they appeared just as expected.
But they returned alone, with no party from Sunset Water, and they carried no return message.
Furl, the female warrior who had led the group, reported, “They were perfectly courteous, but we didn’t see any queens. They let us come inside and we stayed in the guest quarters, and they brought us plenty of food. They told us the next morning that the queen was too busy to write a return message now, but she would send warriors with it soon. It’s not a big court and I did get the feeling they were upset about something, or stressed, as if there had been some problem recently. So maybe the queens really were too busy.”
The lack of an immediate return message was deeply disquieting. Cerise kept her spines in place and didn’t show it. “Hopefully their message will arrive soon. Go and get some rest, Furl. You and the others did well.”
When Furl had left, Cerise sat alone in her bower, absently flexing her claws. A message might have been difficult to write, if the reigning queen had already heard from Emerald Twilight and thought Cloud had been stolen against his will. Cerise wasn’t certain what she would have done in that situation. Well, yes she was, she would have called for her warriors and come in person to see what had happened and to retrieve the consort. It was the only response that made sense.
Perhaps Sunset Water didn’t want Cloud back, or was struggling with some difficulty that made the idea of taking a stand against the more powerful Emerald Twilight an unwelcome proposition. Cerise hissed in irritation. Your clever plan might have been a little too clever, she told herself wryly. And now she had to tell Paragon he had the unwelcome task of informing Cloud that his birthcourt had not responded to the request to come to his aid.
The next day, it got worse.
In the hanging bed in her bower, Cerise curled around Paragon. She was in her Arbora form, bonelessly relaxed, when she became aware they had an audience. She pushed herself up on an elbow and looked over the edge of the bed. Tranquil, Streak, and Fluff stood there.
Cerise said, “This better be important.” She and Paragon hadn’t slept together much in the past few turns. They were still comfortable together but they had made their clutches for the court and the passion between them had cooled over time. But with all the unrequited lust in the air between Indigo and Cloud, Cerise had found herself interested again.
Wincing in anticipation of the response, Tranquil said, “Emerald Twilight is back.”
Cerise stared. This … is very bad. “How many?”
Tranquil said, “Three queens, forty warriors.”
Beneath Cerise, Paragon growled in dismay. She slung herself out of bed and shifted to her winged form.
Streak was still in her groundling form, probably because she couldn’t keep her spines under control otherwise. Her expression was deeply worried. “They landed on an outer platform just as the sun was rising.”
Cerise hissed and led the way out of the bower, and up one of the private stairs to the consorts’ level. She went through the maze of passages and bower entrances to a round door in the outer trunk. It had been originally put here as one of the secondary escape routes, but it also happened to look down on the garden platforms to the right of the knothole entrance. It was used mostly as a way to let the breeze into the consorts’
quarters and to admire the gardens. Cerise slid the heavy bolts back and hauled the door open.
Crystalline wood beetles which had been nesting in the cracks fluttered away as she looked down on the platforms. There they were, as Tranquil had said, three queens and at least forty warriors. They had taken up residence on the same platform they had stayed on before, but this time they had come prepared. They were already setting up a shelter, the cloth shiny and stiff where it had been waterproofed by tree sap. From the colors of their scales, the queens were Argent, Beryl, and Silver again. At least their reigning queen was still back in Emerald Twilight and not directly involving herself.
Cerise felt a snarl build in her chest. Surely you didn’t think they wouldn’t see through this summoning of courts nonsense, did you? she asked herself. Maybe she had thought that. Or maybe she thought Emerald Twilight would have the courtesy and sense to let this go gently. But letting it go would mean they let you win. Argent clearly had no intention of that. Beryl and Silver’s motives weren’t as clear, though Cerise suspected they were mainly concerned with preventing Argent from doing anything to disgrace Emerald Twilight, and also afraid that she would get herself killed. Which didn’t mean they wouldn’t help Argent damage Umber Shadow.
“But why are they here?” Streak said. She was frustrated, the way Arbora always were when Aeriat stirred trouble for little reason. “It’ll be days still before the other courts have a chance to arrive. Do they think they can conquer us with forty warriors?”
Fluff said dryly, “They don’t mean to conquer, they mean to threaten. They know whoever acts first loses. They hope to force us to make some foolish gesture. Then all the other courts will side with them. It’s the only move they can make, if Sunset Water sides with us.” He looked up at Cerise. “Which means—”
“That they don’t know yet that Sunset Water didn’t answer our message,” Cerise finished. She sensed movement behind her and glanced back to see Indigo and Lapis come up through the passage. The others made room so Indigo could look out the doorway. After a moment, Indigo said, “They mean to try to pressure us to give Cloud back before the other courts get here. Or before Sunset Water does.” She met Cerise’s gaze. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
If Sunset Water plans to come at all. “Yes.” Cerise managed to get the word out without a snarl. It wasn’t Indigo she was angry at. She turned away and stalked back down the passage.
Streak stayed to shut the door but the others followed. Indigo said, “You won’t—What are you going to do?”
Cerise heard the trepidation in Indigo’s voice. “I know what I should do.” Give in and hand Cloud over to Argent. It was the sensible thing to do. Though if Sunset Water changed their mind or really had been delayed for some reason, and arrived in a few days ready to take Cloud home, they would see it as a betrayal. It didn’t mean that Cloud’s birthcourt wouldn’t be able to get him back from Emerald Twilight, but Cloud would probably suffer in the meantime. Argent couldn’t risk injuring him physically without her reigning queen intervening, but it wasn’t a situation Cerise would have cared to send any consort into.
No, sending Cloud back was a poor solution for everyone except Argent’s pride.
“He’s not afraid of her,” Indigo said, as if she had been following Cerise’s thoughts. Paragon now stood in the doorway from the stairs that led down to the queens’ level. Streak, Fluff, Tranquil, and Lapis all gathered around watching Indigo and Cerise. Apparently oblivious to all the scrutiny, Indigo continued, “He won’t let her push him too far. He said Sunset Water is smaller and not formal. He used to fight with the warriors—not seriously, as a game—and the Arbora took him and his clutchmates hunting so they would know how, if they had to.”
“So they’re likely to kill each other,” Cerise said, eyeing Indigo sourly. She had thought of that before, as the worst that could happen when a queen and consort mating went wrong. It wasn’t encouraging to hear Indigo thought it likely. “And it’s become our job to save Sunset Water from their folly in handing over a difficult consort to an extremely foolish young queen, and Emerald Twilight from their compounded folly in putting their pride before good sense.”
Indigo flicked her spines in a shrug. “Yes. Someone has to do it.”
Cerise found herself unable to reply, struggling between pride in her daughter and irritation at the whole situation. She said, tiredly, “Indigo …”
Someone said, “I’ll go back.” It was Cloud, standing in the opposite passage entrance, in his groundling form. He was wearing an old shirt and pants borrowed from one of the other consorts; Cerise recognized the vivid blue dye and its tendency to fade along the hems as being unique to Umber Shadow’s Arbora. He didn’t lower his gaze or even twitch uneasily as they all stared at him. Cerise thought he must have heard her conclusion that he and Argent would kill each other. He said, “I don’t want to cause you any more trouble. I won’t fight Argent, I’ll think of a way to appease her, until Sunset Water comes for me.” He said it without a flinch, even though Cerise knew he had taken the news that Sunset Water had sent no return message with Furl very badly. Paragon had said that Cloud had tried to put on a brave array of spines but had been terribly upset.
The atmosphere in the room changed subtly, as Indigo stiffened her spines and tilted her head. “You’ll lie to her, pretend you want her?” Her voice was cool with just a little edge to it.
Cloud flushed dark bronze. “If I have to.”
Cerise met Paragon’s gaze. His lifted eyebrow said “I told you so” as clearly as if he had spoken it aloud. Cerise hissed to herself in resignation. You’re right, she thought, she wants him. Now we just have to get her to admit it to herself. Or to him. Or to someone. Anyone, really.
Indigo said, “She’s not stupid. She won’t believe you. You should have pretended you wanted her when she first brought you to Emerald Twilight.”
“I did want her then.” Cloud lifted his chin. “At least, I thought I did.”
Indigo’s spines lifted, and after a moment Cloud looked away. Indigo said, “Don’t be an idiot. It would be a disaster for Emerald Twilight and your birthcourt if you went back and something happened to you.” She tilted her head toward Cerise. “The only solution is for me to fight her.”
Lapis hissed in dismay and Cloud snarled, “No! You’re the idiot if you think fighting her is going to mean anything but—”
Indigo showed her fangs. “I’ll fight her if I feel like it, you—”
“Children, quiet,” Cerise snapped. She saw Fluff rub his eyes and shake his head in weary frustration. That echoed her feelings exactly. She flared her spines and drew on her connection with the court, giving her voice extra weight when she said, “Tell me right now. Do you two want each other?”
Indigo said, “No,” at the same time as Cloud said, “Yes.”
Indigo stared at him. He didn’t back down or demur. He said, again, “Yes.”
Paragon smiled in approval.
Cloud said, “I mean it, I’ll go back—” at the same time Indigo said, “What do you mean you want—”
“That’s enough,” Cerise said. At least now there was no question of sending Cloud back; Indigo was right about that, they simply couldn’t risk it with Argent so angry and so likely to do something rash. “Cloud will not go back.” She looked from Indigo to Cloud, making sure she had their full attention. “There’s only one Raksura I trust to navigate this disaster, and that’s me.”
Cerise held her council down in the teachers’ hall with the leaders of the Arbora castes and several of the older warriors. A number of other Arbora and warriors gathered at the edges of the room to listen, but she didn’t want privacy for this meeting; the more the court knew, the better. Indigo lurked by the stairs down from the greeting hall, her spines twitching uneasily.
Bloom, the chief of the hunters, scratched the scales under her chin thoughtfully and said, “Forty warriors isn’t exactly enough to give us a fight. I’m guessing the
y hope it’s enough to provoke us, so we’re the ones at fault?”
Cerise flicked her spines in approval at this accurate assessment. “Yes. And if we don’t provoke as planned, Argent will take matters into her own hands and attack someone from the court, whether the other two queens agree or not.” It wasn’t an entirely sensible plan, but perhaps Argent meant to have them embroiled in a war before anybody stopped to ask who had started what, or started dragging warriors out to testify in front of mentors. Perhaps Argent was counting on them giving in before it got to that point.
There was a chorus of hisses from the Arbora. “So if we go out to work, or go out at all, she may attack us,” Streak said. She tilted her head, considering it. “But we only have to stay in until the first of the other courts we’ve summoned arrives. That’s what, eighteen days?”
Cerise said, “We can hope that some of them will arrive a day or two early, so make it sixteen or seventeen days. I know we have enough dried supplies for that.” The warriors all winced at the idea of subsisting on dried meat for that long. She added, “But I also think we have at least a full day, maybe two, before anything happens.”
Streak tapped her claws on the floor thoughtfully. “Argent will think we’re talking it over, perhaps deciding to give in and hand her back the consort. She’ll give us a little time.”
Leaf, the head of the teachers, sat up. “We need to get out there and harvest everything we can. I know there are some fruit trees ready to pick.”
Bloom nodded. “And we need to go hunting. We can go out through one of the lower doors, and they may not even notice us. We’ll need warriors to carry us away from the tree and into the suspended forest.”
Leaf added, “If we get too short of meat, we can also go out through the root entrance and harvest some snails from the pools down there, and maybe hunt a little. And we can trade for extra groundfruit from the Kek.”
It was a good notion. The forest floor was so far below the level of the suspended forest platforms, and protected by thick layers of mist, that it might as well be in another part of the Reaches. The Kek who often lived among the roots of colony trees were allies, though the Raksura seldom saw them. The forest floor tended to be either swampy or studded with rock outcrops, and was the home of so much deadly plant life and so many predators that it made the suspended forest look safe; Raksura tended to avoid it. But in an emergency they could hunt near the tree roots; the stick-like Kek were uninterested in meat of any kind, and would not be disturbed by the intrusion, especially if it meant a chance for trade.
