by Martha Wells
“We know he thought our seed would help him somehow, give him power. We don’t know if he was right or not.” Jade shook her spines, irritated. “We won’t know until we find this mortuary temple.”
Moon hesitated, but he wanted this point settled. “Are you going to let Stone kill Rift?”
Jade twitched at the question. But she said, “Not today.” Her voice hardened. “That’s as far as I’ll go.”
Moon set his jaw, forced himself not to argue, and walked out.
Moon went back into the main room. Rift sat on the floor in the far corner. Esom and Karsis were still seated on the bench, and Chime, Balm, and Drift stood around looking uncomfortable.
Moon asked, “Where’s Flower?” River was missing too, but he didn’t care if River had gone up to take a turn on watch or had flown away to die somewhere.
He had spoken in Kedaic, and Karsis answered, “She said she was going to talk to the older man who stormed off earlier.”
“Is Jade all right?” Balm asked, a little hesitantly.
“Yes.” Moon was hesitant too. “She’s… resting.”
Drift sneered. “She should give you a beating.”
Moon took a step toward him. His expression must have made his first impulse clear. Drift flinched back and hissed.
Balm hissed at Drift, and Chime threw him a glare, saying, “Why don’t you go say that to Jade and see what happens?”
Apparently declining to follow that advice, Drift subsided. He retreated to lean against the wall with his arms folded, and eyed Moon resentfully.
Esom and Karsis sat stiffly, trying to look as if they weren’t tense to the point of rigidity. It seemed cruel to expose them to any more of Drift than absolutely necessary, but they had to be watched. Moon nodded toward an alcove on the other side of the room. It had another stone bench and room to stretch out on the floor. The two groundlings had been awake all night, too, and had to be weary. He said, “You can go over there to rest, if you want. Chime, do you have spare blankets?”
Chime turned to one of the packs lying against the wall. “Yes, I’ll find some. And some water, and I think we have some dried fruit and roots they could eat.”
Relaxing a little, Karsis said, “Thank you,” and Esom nodded, still stiffly.
Moon went over to where Rift was crouched in the corner and sat near him. Rift watched him warily, his body tight with tension. This close, Moon could scent the fear in his sweat. He said, “They won’t kill you.”
Rift’s shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes for a moment. He made a noise that was between a sob and a harsh laugh, and looked up at Moon again. “Your queen does whatever you want?”
Moon stared him down, until Rift dropped his gaze. “Sorry,” Rift muttered. “I didn’t mean… The consorts at my court weren’t like you.”
That was probably true. “Did Ardan think I was here alone?” Yesterday Moon had told the magister that he had friends waiting for him, but he was hoping Ardan had taken that as a lie, part of Moon’s persona as a trader.
Rift shook his head. “I don’t know. He didn’t even tell me that he had another guest.”
Moon let out his breath. He didn’t think that was a lie. Rift’s shock at seeing another Raksura had been genuine. “How much does Ardan know about Raksura? When he saw me shift, would he have known I was a consort? That a consort wouldn’t be here alone?”
Rift’s brow furrowed as he considered it. “He knows what a consort is, but… I’m not sure he really understands, not well enough to realize you wouldn’t be traveling alone.” Rift hesitated and watched him uneasily. “Why did they send you to the tower? Why not one of the warriors?”
Moon drew back. “I’ve been around groundlings. The others haven’t.” He wasn’t ready to say more than that. Rift already had a hold on him, he didn’t need to know details. He countered, “What did you do to get thrown out of your court?”
It was Rift’s turn to recoil. After a moment, he said, “The queens didn’t like me.”
The flicker of hesitation in Rift’s eyes told Moon it was a lie. And if that was a reason to be exiled, half of Indigo Cloud would be wandering the Three Worlds. “Were you from a royal clutch?”
Startled resentment crossed Rift’s expression. “Yes,” Rift admitted, biting the word off as if it hurt to tell the truth. “How did you know?”
There was something about Rift’s attitude that suggested it. The warriors born out of royal clutches always seemed to be the troublesome ones. “Just a wild guess,” Moon said. Across the room he saw Drift, who had been pretending not to listen, roll his eyes in derision.
Rift’s sideways look was dubious. Moon said, “Why didn’t the queens like you?”
“I had a fight with one of the reigning queen’s favorites.” That wasn’t a good reason to be exiled, either. Moon hadn’t even been in the court that long, and he knew young warriors frequently attacked each other. River and Moon had tried to kill each other right in front of Pearl and Jade, and nobody had suggested exiling anybody.
Moon asked, “Did you kill her?”
Rift flicked his spines. “Of course not.”
Moon sensed the story had just veered off the truth again. Rift’s answer had been too easy. Moon thought an adult female warrior, especially a favorite probably from a royal clutch herself, could have beaten Rift into the ground. And if the fight was so violent that Rift had killed his opponent in self-defense, that wouldn’t be such a terrible thing to admit. Moon said, “So they threw you out of the court for losing a fight with a queen’s favorite?”
Rift’s jaw set as if he suppressed some strong emotion. Moon knew in his bones that this was play-acting. Rift said bitterly, “If that’s how you want to describe it. It wasn’t fair, but it’s what happened.”
Moon watched him for a long moment, but Rift’s gaze didn’t waver. He knew he hadn’t gotten the truth yet, but Rift seemed committed to this story, at least for now.
He got to his feet and walked out, randomly picking another doorway off the stairwell. The room within was thankfully empty, a little smaller than the others on this floor, with long narrow windows letting in light and the damp air.
There was a quiet step behind him and he glanced back to see Balm.
She stopped and said, “He’s not like you, Moon. He’s a real solitary, exiled from his court for a good reason.”
Moon rubbed his eyes, trying to be patient. He suspected he was going to be having this conversation a lot. “You don’t know he’s not like me,” he said, aware he was just being difficult. “I could be lying.”
Balm shook her head in exasperation. “You don’t know anything about living in a court. You have to have everything explained to you, and when we do explain it, you look like you think we’re crazy. Everyone who speaks to you notices that. No one is that good a liar.”
Moon turned away abruptly and sat down against the wall, folding his arms. He had expected to have the conversation, but not that it was going to be about him. Balm followed and sat on her heels in front of him. He said, reluctantly, “It could have been me. Everything Rift did. When I was alone, I was just looking for a place to live. If I’d been hurt, trapped, and been found by someone like Ardan, who was kind to me… Even if he wanted to use me, I might have gone along with it, just to belong somewhere.” He waved a hand in frustration. “That’s exactly what happened with Stone. I crossed the Three Worlds for the first person who asked me.”
“The first Raksura who asked you,” Balm corrected, unconvinced. “Back at the colony tree, you told me what I should do. Now I’m telling you. This solitary is not like you. Thinking of him that way is a mistake.” She sat back. “He’s even changed his name. No one calls a child ‘Rift.’”
Stone had said much the same thing about Sorrow, the warrior whom Moon had thought of as his mother. But a warrior who changed her name to Sorrow because her court had been destroyed and she was left alone with four small Arbora and a fledgling con
sort to care for was understandable. A warrior who left his court and called himself “Rift”… “I know. I know I can’t trust him.”
Balm watched him. “Do you trust us?”
Moon couldn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t trust them. Maybe he was pretending they were his family, going through the motions, but deep in his heart he didn’t really believe it. It would explain a lot, he told himself. Like why you keep acting like an idiot.
Balm shook her head regretfully. “Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it. Did you think we would have let that noisy little Emerald Twilight queen touch you?”
It had never even crossed his mind that they might defend him. From a Fell or a predator or some other common enemy, but not from a Raksuran queen, even one from a strange court. It was an uncomfortable insight.
His inability to answer told Balm all she needed to know. She sighed and squeezed his knee sympathetically, then pushed to her feet and walked away.
Chime passed her in the doorway, and Moon hunched his shoulders, feeling beleaguered. “Don’t say she’s right. I know she’s right.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say.” Chime sat down, settling uneasily on the cracked tiles. “She is right, though.”
Moon rubbed his forehead; the tension and the long night underground had given him a headache. “What were you going to say?”
“Nothing. I just… I don’t want to worry Flower. Especially now, when she’s trying to talk to Stone.”
Moon squelched a surge of guilt at the mention of Stone. “Worry her about what?”
Chime sighed. “I keep having these… odd feelings.”
“Odd how?”
Chime made a vague gesture. “Like I can feel water moving, and… cold and weight and rock. I’m twitchy, like I can just catch glimpses of things that flick away before I can focus on them. The feelings come and go, in bursts—which is good, because otherwise I’d go out of my head.”
That definitely sounded odd. “When did it start?”
“Since just before dawn, when we landed on this creature.” Chime shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with the whole idea that he might have some sort of heightened awareness of the leviathan. “I know. If it’s a coincidence, it’s a strange one.”
“Is it a mentor thing? I mean, are you…” Knowing how badly Chime felt about his involuntary change to warrior, Moon hesitated to suggest that Chime might be getting his abilities back. If he wasn’t, if it was just his imagination… Hope was painful.
But Chime shook his head. “No, it can’t be. Augury isn’t like this. This is different.”
“Then you should talk to Flower.”
“I know.” Chime slumped. “I’m tired of strange things happening to me. I just got used to being able to fly, and to hunting, and all the other things I’m supposed to do now. I know this is the only way you’ve ever seen me, but to me it still feels like it just happened.”
“No, I know what you mean.” Moon felt like he was reliving his past at regular intervals, whether he liked it or not.
Flower stepped into the doorway, gave the room a sour look, then came to sit down next to Moon with a grunt of effort. “Consorts,” she said, in a tone that made it sound like an insulting epithet. “Old, stubborn, obstinate consorts.” She eyed Moon without favor. “And you. You have to be coaxed to do everything except risk your life.”
Moon fumbled for a rebuttal as Chime said, “Are you all right? You look terrible.”
Flower transferred her glare to him. “If you ask me that one more time, I will curdle your liver.”
“Hah, good luck trying to slip me the simple to do it with.” Chime leaned close to her, despite her attempt to bat him away. “You’ve got blood trails in your eyes.”
Moon took her hand. Her skin was the matte white of extreme age, no trace left of its original color, though there were traces of gray in the creases around her wrist and on her palm. He wondered how many Raksura were left in the court who remembered what Flower had looked like in her youth, if her skin had been bronze or copper or some shade in between, if her hair had been black or red-brown. Stone was more than old enough, and maybe Bone. Pearl might be, but he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t learned to judge the age of queens yet. He said, “You should rest.”
She freed her hand. “I’ll rest when we get the seed.”
“Yes, that’s why I’m risking my life,” Moon said pointedly. “We knew what we were doing. You shouldn’t have let Jade bring the warriors.”
“I know.” Flower rubbed her eyes. “I advised her not to go.”
That didn’t make Moon feel any better. Worried, Chime said, “I didn’t know. Did you have a vision that we shouldn’t go? And Jade didn’t listen?”
“No, it wasn’t a vision,” she said, annoyed. “I just thought we should wait. Sometimes I don’t have visions; sometimes I have common sense. Not that any of you listen to me.”
“You could have lied and said it was a vision,” Moon said. They both looked at him, nearly identical exasperated expressions. “What?”
“Mentors don’t lie about visions.” Flower sighed. “I’m going to rest now, hold still.”
“What? No, I can’t—” Flower climbed into Moon’s lap, ignoring his protests. “I need to keep an eye on Rift.”
“Balm and the others are watching him and the groundlings. Root is going to come get me when it’s my turn,” Chime said and settled against Moon’s shoulder.
Flower had buried her face against his chest and he automatically put his arms around her. She felt like she was all sharp bones under the light material of her dress; it was like holding a Kek. He didn’t remember her feeling this insubstantial. In fact he was fairly certain she had had more solid muscle, like the other Arbora, not that long ago. But before he could think of a way to frame a question, she said, “Stone won’t kill him. Not now. You two can fight that out later.”
Moon leaned back against the wall. He was painfully sensitive to any mention of Stone at the moment, angry, guilty, and angry at himself for feeling guilty.
He didn’t mean to rest, but he hadn’t slept since last night, so he ended up dozing for a while. He woke when Root came to get Chime for his turn at watch. Too anxious to stay still, Moon handed the still-sleeping Flower over to Root.
Everything was quiet. Chime and Song settled down to watch Rift, who had fallen asleep. Jade was in the other room, sleeping with Balm, and River was up in the top room on watch. Esom and Karsis had even dozed off, lying in a corner of the main room on borrowed blankets.
Moon paced an empty room on the far side of the stairwell, thinking of everything they needed to do. Jade and the warriors had eaten heavily before they left the mainland, and had brought meat in their packs, wrapped in the big leaves of the mountain-saplings. It was enough for the moment, but they were going to have to feed everyone in the next couple of days. They still had enough metal bits to buy food, but the market he and Stone had used was too close to Ardan’s tower. Looking for another one would be a good use of Moon’s time, except he couldn’t go outside in the daylight for fear that Ardan’s men might be searching for him.
He had reached a peak of frustration when Song ducked into the doorway. She said, “Floret’s back. She says they found the place.”
“It was just like the groundling said,” Floret reported, when they gathered in the main room again.
Stone had returned from the depths of the tower and leaned against the wall, as calm as if nothing had happened. That made Moon’s jaw so tight his back teeth ached. Rift hunched in a corner, with Chime and Balm nearby. River stood near Jade, with a grimly skeptical expression that seemed to be trying to indicate that he was a leader but not responsible for anything that went wrong. Esom and Karsis had taken seats on the bench again, and watched anxiously. Flower sat nearby, still trying to wake up. Drift was on guard now, up on the open top floor, and Root and Song stayed near the doorway, as if ready to make a quick escape if there was another fight.
>
Having left before the argument broke out, Floret didn’t notice the undercurrents, or if she did, she was too excited by her news to worry about it. “A big round building, near a flooded part of the city, towards the front of the leviathan. There weren’t many groundlings living nearby, and they all seemed to be sick or sleeping, and they smelled funny.” Or drunk, Moon thought. Floret had probably never seen anyone intoxicated before. She continued, “The only ones who looked normal were guarding the round building’s doors. Vine stayed behind to keep watch on it, in case anyone comes to take the seed away.”
Jade asked, “There was only one way in?”
“That we could see.” Floret glanced at Moon. “Vine and I thought that since you and the two groundlings found an underground passage out of that tower—”
“There could be one into this mortuary.” Moon looked at Rift. “Is there?”
Rift shrugged helplessly. “There could be, but I never went there with Ardan. I don’t know where the entrance would be.”
“If it’s guarded on the surface, wouldn’t it be guarded underground, too?” Chime ventured, with a cautious glance at Stone.
“The passage down from Ardan’s tower wasn’t, but then groundlings would have needed ropes or ladders to use it,” Moon said. It had looked more like a handy disposal area for garbage or waste. Whatever its original purpose, it had fallen into such disuse it had been nearly forgotten. He didn’t remember seeing any other shafts upward to other structures, not that he had been looking closely. “We could try going back and working our way toward the mortuary, but Ardan might still be searching down there for us.”
Stone said, in Kedaic, “Why did you think it was a mortuary?”
Moon looked up, startled. Stone watched Esom and Karsis. Confused, since no one had translated the other part of the conversation for them, Esom said, “The building I described, where we think your seed is? Oh, well, Negal and I saw what seemed to be a funeral procession going inside. We asked one of the local men, and he told us the dead were carried there.” He looked around, and explained, “We had been trying to find out about the burial customs of the city.”
