The Serpent Sea

by Martha Wells

  Jade tapped her claws on the floor, impatient. “How did it happen?”

  Stone said, “This was when Indigo was still a sister queen—when her mother Cerise was still alive—and she was visiting Emerald Twilight. She saw Cloud and just… grabbed him. Half the queens in the Reaches got together to settle it to prevent a war, and by that time Indigo had talked Cloud into accepting her and repudiating his first queen. The other queens talked Emerald Twilight into letting it go.” He spread his hands. “It was a successful match. Indigo succeeded as reigning queen, the court renamed itself after her and Cloud, and they led us to a new colony when this one started to fail. They had eight clutches. But I have no idea how Emerald Twilight sees it.”

  Everyone was silent as they digested that. Bell and Knell exchanged an uneasy glance. Bone growled under his breath, sounding disgruntled.

  Chime cleared his throat. He said tentatively, “Maybe this would be a good time to revisit the discussion about changing the court’s name?”

  Everyone ignored him. Jade asked Stone, “If we had to search for another colony, where would we go?”

  Stone’s expression wasn’t encouraging. “If we stay in the Reaches, we’d have to find an unclaimed territory and build one ourselves. That means no solid shelter for the rain seasons, no prepared ground for gardens.” Her voice quiet, Flower said, “I’m afraid to think how many of the wounded and the aged wouldn’t survive that.”

  Chime hunched his shoulders, as if shuddering at the thought. “We’ve had too many illnesses in the last twenty turns. I know it was the Fell influence on the old colony, but if we have another outbreak of lung disease…”

  Moon could imagine it all too readily. He had seen enough failing groundling camps to know what could happen. A fire, a flood, a bad crop year, a disease that took too many for the group to recover. Small settlements were vulnerable, especially when forced to migrate.

  Stone didn’t acknowledge their comments, and just continued, “If we go back outside or into the Fringes… I’d have to scout for a ruin to settle in.”

  “And hope you could find one before this tree collapses on us,” Knell said.

  Pearl told Jade, “We’ll try Emerald Twilight first. You’ll just have to go anyway and hope that… Just hope.”

  Jade nodded, for once in complete accord with Pearl. “I will.”

  The talk turned to who would go, and exactly what a formal embassy should consist of. Apparently five warriors was the right number for a formal greeting, and everyone thought that the addition of Stone and Flower would show how serious their errand was. Also, Jade admitted, it might make Emerald Twilight think twice if they were inclined to be difficult and refuse the greeting. It was a much more serious breach of etiquette to ignore a line-grandfather and an elderly Arbora mentor.

  “It takes away their choice to refuse,” Pearl explained, still cranky even though she wasn’t going. “Be aware that that alone may make them angry.”

  It was a good point, but Moon didn’t think it mattered. If the other court was inclined to be angry, everything they did or didn’t do was just going to make it worse. He was going to say so, when Pearl added, “And you’ll need a consort with you. Moon will have to go along.” Her tone made it clear she didn’t enjoy this prospect at all.

  Startled, Moon looked at the others, expecting an argument. Instead, everyone just nodded agreement. Some of it was reluctant agreement, but no one protested. Jade said, “But is he recovered well enough for a long flight?”

  Flower said, “He should be. He’s young, and his injuries healed well. And I’ll be there if he has any trouble.”

  It wasn’t his injury that Moon was worried about. “Are we sure that’s a good idea?” He wanted to go, to see the mountain-thorn if for no other reason, but the etiquette of the formal visit sounded fraught with complication. There were so many nuances he didn’t understand, even here. He didn’t think he was ready for a big busy court yet. “Stone’s already going.”

  Flower explained, “Stone is a line-grandfather. And they’ll expect Jade, as a sister queen, to bring her own consort. A sister queen and a consort are essential for a first-time meeting with a court of Emerald Twilight’s stature.”

  With a grim expression, Knell said, “And when they ask what court he’s from, what are you going to say?”

  And here was yet another nuance Moon didn’t understand. As far as he knew, he was from this court. “What do you mean?”

  Jade answered, “It’s going to be a formal embassy. If we introduce you, we have to give your lineage.”

  “Oh.” That was going to be awkward. He didn’t want to have to explain himself or prove that he wasn’t a crazy solitary every time they met someone new. “Can’t we just make one up?”

  Jade gave him an exasperated look. “No.”

  He thought it was the best solution. “You could say I came from Sky Copper.” The only survivors of the destroyed court were Frost, Thorn, and Bitter, and they could probably be coached to confirm the story if it was ever necessary.

  Stone looked intrigued at the suggestion, but Jade said, “Moon, no.”

  There was an uneasy silence.

  Stone said, “So it’s going to be, ‘This is Moon, we won’t say where he came from so you can assume he’s a feral solitary.’”

  Jade gave him a sour look. “How about, ‘and this is Stone, our cranky line-grandfather that we dragged along so he could start fights with everyone.’”

  Grimly determined, Pearl told Moon, “You’ll have to tell them the truth. Just don’t embarrass us.”

  Moon suppressed an irritated hiss. “I’ve walked into strange camps and settlements all my life. I know how to act.” But even as he said it, he knew he would probably eat those words.

  

  Later, Moon and Jade sat outside on the edge of the knothole, watching the fall of night under the mountain-trees. The light had turned a deep green-gold, gradually fading as the sun set somewhere past the trees. A little flurry of tiny yellow flying things played in the spray of the waterfall. When one strayed close enough, Moon realized they were flying frogs, something he hadn’t seen before. On one of the platforms about a hundred paces below, a group of Arbora still explored the beds of the old gardens, searching for buried roots. A few young warriors flew around under the upper branches, looping and diving in play.

  Her voice tight, Jade said, “I hope we can stay here.”

  It had to be what everyone was thinking tonight. Stone hadn’t promised them anything, and this place had been more than any of them had expected. Moon leaned against her shoulder and said, “That was good, when you got Pearl to send you to Emerald Twilight instead of going herself.”

  Jade’s spines rippled in a shrug. “It’s not as if she wanted to go. She hates talking to other queens.” She added, “I think we’ll take Vine with us. Pearl trusts him, and taking him will make us look more united to the rest of the court.”

  Moon thought it was a little late for that. No one in the court with any sense could possibly have missed the tension between the two queens. But he didn’t have any real objection to Vine. “What about Balm? She’s done this before.” Balm had gone to Wind Sun with Vine in an unsuccessful attempt to ask the other court for help.

  “I want her to come. We need a female warrior to speak for us when we arrive. Floret’s the only other one who’s spoken to other courts before, and she’s close to Pearl.” Jade stirred uneasily. “But I’ve tried to talk to Balm, and it didn’t go well. It was hard on the boats. There was nowhere private, and she wouldn’t fly off anywhere with me.”

  It might be that Balm just didn’t want to talk about what the Fell had done to her, not yet. Moon could understand that at a bone-deep level. “Tell her you need her help. Tell her it’s her duty.”

  “It’ll make her feel guilty.”

  “She already feels guilty.” It might as well be used for a good purpose.

  Jade thought about it a moment more, then nodded. �
��It can’t hurt to ask. I’ll go find her.”

  Jade went inside, and Moon sat there a while longer, watching the light fail. He was about to go in when a green warrior swooped down from above, cupping his wings to land on a narrow ledge just below the lip of the knothole. It was River.

  Moon leaned back and propped himself on his arms, deliberately casual. “Here for that beating?” He really hoped so.

  Sounding amused, River said, “You should be afraid of this trip, solitary. This will be a big court, with lots of consorts to spare.”

  Moon didn’t show his sudden sense of unease. “So.”

  River climbed a little closer, gripping the bark with his claws. “Jade’s never been near an adult consort she wasn’t related to. All the ones at the courts near us were taken already, or too young. Why do you think she settled for you?”

  Moon shoved forward and shifted in a blur of movement. But River fell backward off the ledge and twisted into a dive through the spray of the waterfall.

  Moon stopped, trying to settle his spines. Chasing River was no good. It wasn’t as if he could kill him when he caught him. It would upset the others too much.

  The words stung because they were true. By the time Jade had grown to adulthood, Pearl had driven off the consorts who had been born to Amber, her sister queen, sending them to other courts. The other consorts had died of illness, or been killed in fighting off attacks on the colony.

  Stone had said Azure had chosen him out of the lot, but Jade hadn’t had a choice. It had been Moon or nobody, and the court had been reluctant to move without a consort for her.

  He knew Jade wanted him now, but his position in Indigo Cloud had been far more secure when he was the only available consort in flying distance. He knew queens could take more than one consort, and have warrior and Arbora lovers, but that wouldn’t affect his place in the court. And he had thought that as long as he was with Jade, he could handle it. He hadn’t counted on the members of the court who weren’t happy with an ex-feral solitary as first consort having the opportunity to pressure Jade to replace him.

  Moon turned and went back to the passage, taking it through to the greeting hall, snarling under his breath. Now he had yet another reason to be uneasy about this trip.

  Chapter Five

  They left at dawn the next morning, flying under the canopy through the suspended forest. Traveling as fast as they could, Moon and Jade could have made the trip in three days rather than

  five. Stone could fly much faster than that, even carrying Flower, but all three kept to the warriors’ pace. Everyone agreed that showing up at a strange court, especially one that had no reason to be friendly, without the warriors necessary for the formal greeting would waste more time than it would save. It would give Emerald Twilight’s queens an excuse to delay speaking to them, or to refuse to see them at all. Moon had already gotten the idea that Raksuran courts saw no inherent reason to be nice to each other; this was just more proof that alliances between courts, let alone friendly relationships, had to be carefully managed.

  The warriors they brought were Chime, Balm, Vine, Floret, and Song. Chime had spent little time outside the colony compared to the others, but after flying to the Golden Isles and chasing kethel across desert plains to a Dwei Hive, he wasn’t much daunted by a trip to visit another court. Vine and Floret were Pearl’s choices. Vine had visited other courts before, and he was easier to deal with than many of the warriors she might have picked. Moon didn’t know Floret well. In groundling form, she had the copper skin and red-brown hair that was common in Indigo Cloud to both Aeriat and Arbora, and she seemed to get along with the others. Song was young, but Jade trusted her and she had visited Sky Copper when it was Indigo Cloud’s closest ally. Moon had always thought her groundling form looked enough like Balm’s for the two to be related; they both had warm, dark skin and curling, honey-colored hair.

  Moon wasn’t sure how Jade’s talk with Balm had gone, but Balm had shown up in the greeting hall before dawn, ready to leave. She was tense and quiet whenever they landed to rest, but at least Chime and Song were treating her as they always had, as if nothing had ever happened. Hopefully that would help her feel more at ease.

  Just before dawn, when they were nearly ready to leave, Moon had gone down to the nurseries to see Bitter, Thorn, and Frost. Most of the younger kids were still asleep or just stirring, so Bark had shooed them into one of the smaller rooms off the main area so they could talk without disturbing the others. Moon had told them he was going to be away for a while, and why. Considering how unconcerned they had been about the possibility of leaving the colony tree, he thought they would take it well. He was wrong.

  Thorn huddled in a bristling unhappy heap, refusing to shift to groundling, and Bitter just stared at Moon with big hopeless eyes. Frost threw an actual fit, flared her wings, and snarled that he had no right to go and railed against Jade for taking him.

  “Frost, stop.” Moon had seen groundlings spank their young before and had no idea how that would work with a Raksuran fledgling queen. But he was ready to give it a try.

  That must have shown in his expression, because Frost stopped in mid-word, eyed him a moment, and settled into a sulk. She said, “We don’t want you to go. Who’ll take care of us?”

  “Bell and Bark and the other Arbora.” Moon hadn’t been taking care of them anyway, not the way the teachers were, with all the real work of feeding, bathing, and making them behave. On the boat, while his back and shoulder healed, he hadn’t been able to do much of anything except watch them play.

  “They can’t fight like you can,” Thorn said, his voice deeper and raspy in his other form.

  “Pearl will be here.” Pearl might be moody and pessimistic, but she could rip a Fell ruler apart like a straw doll and wouldn’t hesitate when it came to physically defending the court.

  Bitter leaned over to Thorn and whispered inaudibly. Thorn translated, “Bitter says we want you.”

  That one went right to the heart and Moon winced. He wasn’t even sure why they felt that way about him. He had barely gotten them out of the Dwei hive before Ranea had caught him. It had been Jade and Pearl who had saved them all. But he had been the first Raksura they had seen since the destruction of Sky Copper, the death of everyone they knew, the end of their world. “I have to go. But when I come back, I’ll teach you all how to hunt.”

  Bitter blinked. Thorn’s spines flicked and the two exchanged a look. Frost’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. She said, “Bitter can’t fly yet. He’s too small.”

  Sorrow had started teaching Moon to hunt when he was barely big enough to leap from branch to branch, a precaution that had allowed him to survive after she was killed. “He can still learn.”

  Frost had considered that, consulted with the two consorts, then finally agreed, grudgingly. “All right. But don’t be away long.”

  Moon managed not to let her maneuver him into any promises as to how soon he would be back.

  

  The scenery made the journey pass quickly. The variety of grasseaters and predators living on the platforms of the mountain-trees seemed endless; Moon saw tree frogs nearly as big as he was, mottled gray-green to blend into the bark, clinging to the broad branches and thoughtfully watching the Raksura fly past. And the trees themselves often took on fantastic shapes. They passed one that was covered with giant gray nodules, each as big around as the Valendera, and another that was hung with curtains of moss, thousands of paces long, draped like fabric. They had no difficulty finding the way; Raksura always knew which direction was south, an ability which Chime had described as a natural pull toward the heart point of the Three Worlds.

  Moon’s bad shoulder was sore after the first full day of flying, but the discomfort lessened every day, and he could feel the muscles stretching and getting strong again. He thought he was healing faster flying than he would have just sitting around the colony.

  They stopped to rest and sleep on the platforms or the wide branches of th
e mountain-trees. As Moon had noticed when they crossed the grass plains together, Stone’s presence seemed to drive off predators, even when he was in his groundling form, and he had the same effect here.

  They slept one night in a hollowed out space on a branch, and Moon woke to hear the dry rustle of something big slithering away. He sat up, out of the warm pile of the others, to see the dark outlines of Song keeping watch at the top of the hollow and Stone sitting next to her. Song crouched down a little, but hadn’t hissed an alarm. Stone must have heard Moon move, because he shook his head slightly, telling him it was all right.

  From where he was huddled behind Moon, Chime whispered nervously, “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Moon whispered back, and lay down again.

  They had eaten heavily before they left the colony, but long days of flying made them hungry, so they stopped briefly to hunt as they went along. On the fourth day, Moon sat out the hunt with Stone, Jade, and Flower, watching from an upper branch as the warriors stalked a big wooly grasseater on one of the platforms below. Stone had said they were close enough to Emerald Twilight that scouts might be watching. It brought home the fact that Jade might not care much about Moon’s unconsortlike behavior, but another court would.

  Jade had told him as much as she could about what to expect, but Moon could make all kinds of mistakes, most without even knowing he was making them. This could go very badly wrong, and it could be my fault. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  

  On the afternoon of the fifth day, they flew into an open area under the forest canopy, and got their first glimpse of Emerald Twilight’s mountain-thorn.

  Thorn-covered branches as big around as the flying boats wound out and up to form a giant globe. The branches were wreathed with vines and flowers, and so large the smaller trees of the suspended forest had taken root on many of them. A trio of warriors flew across the clearing, banking close enough to see the newcomers, but not to bar their path.