A faint vibration went through the deck, and a moment later the flying boat brushed past the leaves of a tree canopy as it moved up into increasingly brighter sunlight. They were on their way.
For a while, they just watched the Reaches from above, enjoying the breeze and the warm sun. When Moon was flying, the ground went by far too fast for much observation, and his attention was on the wind and keeping to the right direction. On a flying boat, there was endless time to see everything below you in detail.
Then Stone said, “We need to get the groundlings over the idea that we’re going to stay shut up in this room the whole time.”
Moon leaned against the window sill, reluctant. He wasn’t happy about socializing with these particular groundlings, but Stone was right. It would be a good idea to get them used to the fact that the Raksura would be moving freely around the boat. “We need to be careful.”
The look Stone threw him was not approving. “I know that.”
Moon managed to keep his mutter of I know you know that subvocal.
Chime eyed Stone warily. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to get in a fight,” Stone told him.
Moon stared in exasperation at the ceiling. Stone’s mood hadn’t improved any. Root said, “Really?” River made a snort of derision that seemed to be aimed at all of them. Chime protested, “It’s only the first day.”
Stone sighed, with that air that suggested he wished he had never mated in the first place. “That was a joke.” He went to where Delin had retired to a cushion in a corner, making notes. He gave Delin a nudge and said, “Come and give us a tour of the boat.”
Delin began to put up his writing materials. “Excellent idea.”
“I’ll stay here,” Moon said. He wanted a chance to look over the map again, and he wasn’t as interested in being stared at by groundlings as Stone was. To the others, he said, “Just remember, speak Altanic. Don’t let them know you understand Kedaic. And be careful what you say.”
He got dutiful murmurs of assent from the Arbora and Chime, Root, and Song, and a glance of contempt from River. They followed Stone and Delin out into the corridor, a bemused Merit trailing along last. Moon rubbed his face and wondered if any of their efforts at subterfuge would last past the first day. For a race who had supposedly originally used their shapeshifting abilities to trap and prey on groundlings, Raksura were lousy liars.
He got the map out of Chime’s pack and spread it across the bed. It didn’t show their entire route, just the coast and a portion of the sel-Selatra, then the trail of islands and sea-mounts leading toward the site of the city. It didn’t tell him much he didn’t already know, but at least he had the directions of their route in his head now.
He was folding the cloth map when someone shook the sliding door. Moon stuffed the map into the pack, pulled out a packet of writing paper Chime had brought, and pretended to be reading the first sheet. “Come in.” If the groundlings found out they had made one copy of the map, let alone three, the whole situation would be even more difficult than it already was.
The door slid open. Surprisingly, it was Captain Rorra. She said, “Am I allowed to speak to you?”
Moon kept his attention on the paper. “I don’t know; are you?”
Rorra stepped into the room. Stiff as one of the cork floorboards, she said, “It was my understanding that you are the property of the queen.”
Moon let his breath out in irritation, and looked up at her. “I understand the connotations of the word ‘property’ in Altanic and if you didn’t mean it to be an insult, I don’t think you would have used it.”
Her face worked, as if she was struggling with different emotions and didn’t want to show any of them. None of them appeared to be chagrin. “Isn’t that the case? An insult to you is an insult to her.”
It was hard to explain something that he didn’t quite understand himself, at least not well enough to articulate it. Especially when he was being provoked. “I belong to the court, just like everybody else in it.” He groped for the right words. “She protects me to show she can protect the court.”
“So you’re helpless, to be protected—”
Moon was on his feet in one smooth motion and looking down at her. “I’m really not,” he said. He didn’t shift, though the surge of pure anger at her words made it difficult.
A surge of anger. That’s odd, Moon thought.
He stepped back. Rorra’s expression went blank and her eyes hooded, a defensive response. Her voice trembled just a little as she said, “That’s good. We don’t need any dead weight in this expedition.”
Moon knew he had a temper, but she hadn’t been pushing him that hard. He had taken worse insults than that without threatening anybody. Something else had to be going on. “Hold it. Are you causing that?”
She took a step back. Now she was showing emotion. It was humiliation. Stiff, angry humiliation, but still humiliation. “I don’t mean to.”
Moon tasted the air, and caught just the faintest unfamiliar scent off her skin, almost too ephemeral to detect. He couldn’t place it. “What is it? There’s a scent. A pheromone?” He used the Raksuran word for it because he had no idea what it was in Altanic, or even if the idea existed in Altanic. “A scent that makes people react. That communicates.”
That she understood. Her expression was grim. “Yes. It isn’t intentional.”
“I’m sorry I reacted like that.” The fury had disappeared, overcome by a keen appreciation of just how awkward and embarrassing this was. At least it had happened in private. Moon fumbled for something to say. “That must be . . . hard to deal with.” Or impossible to deal with. But it must not affect every species in the same way. He doubted she would have survived very long if it had. “Not everyone can scent it?”
“No, some species can’t. Not the Kish-Jandera, like Callumkal and the others of this crew. They have little sense of smell.” Rorra swallowed hard, flustered. “I should go.”
It explained why Jade was so agitated around Rorra. As she turned to go, he said, “Tell me what it is. That might make it easier to ignore.”
She hesitated, a little of her habitual glare returning. He said, “Raksura know a lot about scents.” This was true. There were scent-markers that queens could produce and detect that no one else could, like the one that signaled to other queens that Moon was Jade’s consort. As a consort Moon experienced some scents more clearly than the warriors and Arbora did, and Arbora could follow scents that the warriors could barely detect. Stone hadn’t seemed to react to her at all, but then Stone was odd. Sitting here with her for a few moments would give Moon a chance to learn the scent so he could hopefully filter out the effect.
She grimaced, clearly reluctant, but she turned away from the door. “It’s a characteristic of my species of sealing. In saltwater, it’s a request for distance, a neutral signal. In the air . . . it is not neutral. I can’t control it. I can make other scents but this one is . . . not voluntary.”
Moon tried to imagine how difficult that would be to cope with in a tense situation. Anticipating it probably brought it on even more quickly. No wonder she radiated tension. He couldn’t think of anything to say. “I’m sorry.”
She looked away. “You’ve already apologized. I’m used to it.” She made what was obviously a determined effort to change the subject. “I actually wanted to speak to you about the underwater city you found. The creature inside it. Delin told us about it but I wanted to hear it from one of you.” She hesitated. “I wasn’t sure if I should speak to you without the queen’s permission, especially after what happened last time.”
Moon sat down on the bed. “What did you want to know?” Since the first attempt at a conversation had gone astray rapidly even from something as innocuous as can I talk to you?, it would be best to keep this one as on target as possible. Rorra seemed to be naturally reticent, and the scent that made everything she did seem like a deliberate affront had to make it worse. He wondered why she h
ad left the sea at all, to put up with this. Plus the fact that her feet didn’t seem designed to walk on land and she needed the boots to compensate, she must have a powerful motivation. He felt asking what it was would just make the whole situation worse.
When Moon’s survival had depended on pretending to be a groundling for turns at a time, he had avoided asking questions, since they usually opened him up to being asked questions in return, often very hard-to-answer questions. Old habits died hard, and now he tended to operate on the principle that if people wanted him to know things, they would tell him.
Rorra seemed relieved to be talking about something, anything else. “Delin said you first thought it was a shapeshifter?”
“It was pretending to be one, to keep the Fell there while its prison was opening. What it was really doing was making us see things. You’ve heard of how the Fell can do that?”
“Yes. I’ve never experienced it.”
If she had, she would be dead, but there was no point in explaining that. “This was similar, but it was happening to all of us. A Fell ruler can do it to multiple groundlings, but it has to work on one person at a time. It has to get close to them and tell them what it wants them to see, or think, or remember. This thing made itself look like a forerunner. It made us all see that the city was filling up with water. It happened instantly. We could feel the water, but one of us was in groundling form and his clothes were dry. We realized it wasn’t real, but the thing was still able to hide from us under the water. The water that wasn’t really there.” It was hard to get across in words just how terrifying the experience had been.
Rorra frowned, but now he could tell she was worried and not angry. Maybe knowing about her odd scent did help. “That’s disturbing.”
“That’s one way to put it.” They didn’t know how many people the creature could fool at one time. It might be a handful of Raksura and Fell, it might be hundreds.
“And it attached a Fell to its own body?” Rorra appeared to fully realize just how horrible this was. “To consume it?”
“Maybe.” Moon tried to think of a way to describe it. “We saw a predator once that attached parts of its prey to its own body, to be able to do things that they could do.”
Rorra’s frown deepened in confusion. “How did the predator do that?”
“We don’t know. We had to kill it before we had a chance to ask.” At her expression he added, “I don’t think it would have told us anyway.”
She hesitated. “I ask about this because I want the expedition to be prepared.”
“That’s good,” Moon told her. He didn’t think it was possible to be prepared for some things, but it was a good thought.
Rorra said, “You’re different than I thought you’d be,” and abruptly left the cabin.
Moon decided that if he had almost gotten into a fight with someone who wasn’t even trying to argue with him, he had better check on the others.
He found his way to the common room without running into anyone. There were several Kishan inside, sitting on stools or benches. They had the same dark roughly-textured skin and curly dark hair as Callumkal and Kalam, but were all shorter and heavy-set. They weren’t talking or moving, and after a moment he realized that was because Bramble was in the room.
She was studying the maps mounted on the walls. The Kishan kept glancing at her, then down at the floor, then at each other, then at her again.
In her groundling form, Bramble still didn’t look harmless. She only came up to Moon’s shoulder, but she was wearing her work clothes, a light sleeveless shirt and pants cut off at the knee, and her stocky build and the muscles in her shoulders and forearms were obvious. Despite the flower someone had stuck into her hair before they left the colony, she looked like she could pick up one of the Kishan and easily toss them across the room. In her scaled and clawed form, she could easily rip them limb from limb, but nobody needed to mention that.
Then Bramble turned to the Kishan, pointed at one of the maps, and, speaking Altanic, said, “Is this where you’re from?”
The Kishan hesitated, but a brave one stood and said, “No, not exactly.” The silver-trimmed dark blue coat was open and there were four protuberances on her chest that looked like breasts, so Moon assumed she was female. She went to the map and stood barely a pace away from Bramble, though Moon could tell she was nervous. She pointed to the map. “Most of us are from Kedmar-Jandera. That city is the nearest port and trade capital, Irev-Jandera.”
Bramble bit her lip, studying the map. “All the cities are connected? You’re all called Kishan?”
“Yes. Well, there are a lot of different groups, and species, in all the different cities.” She indicated the others in the room. “Our species is called Janderi, and we’re related to the Janderan. We’re from the Jandera, which was where the Kish trade empire began. But in general, we’re all called Kishan. Or Kish-Jandera, if you’re just talking about us and the Janderan.”
“So . . .” Bramble hesitated, then evidently decided to just ask. “How do you decide what to do? When you’re all so spread out like that?”
Once it had turned into a general discussion and lecture about the history of the Kishan trade empire, and how groundlings governed themselves without queens or courts, Moon slipped away down the corridor. It was interesting, but he should probably find Jade.
He took the stairs up to the deck, and came out into bright sunlight and a steady breeze to see Jade still with Balm and Briar, talking to Callumkal and Vendoin. The two warriors had shifted to groundling, the wind catching at their curling hair. Moon saw Stone, Chime, Merit, and Delin up in the bow, leaning on the rail and looking down. It was tempting to join them, but Moon decided it was probably his duty to stand next to Jade and look decorative.
As he reached her, Callumkal turned to lead the way through a doorway in the ridge. Balm murmured to Moon, “He’s going to show us how the ship works.”
With the warriors, Moon followed Jade and Callumkal and Vendoin down a corridor and into the steering cabin in the bow. The long windows all around had top and bottom shutters angled to give some protection from the outside, and had reflective interior surfaces to allow a better view. The actual steering device was a long lever projecting out of the back wall, like the tiller of a small boat. A Janderi woman held it in position while Kalam consulted a small glass and metal directional device. There were benches around the walls, and a flat board that extended out from the wall for examining maps.
The only thing Moon couldn’t figure out were the pottery jars with clear crystal windows on a shelf along the back wall. They might have been decorative, but somehow he didn’t think so.
Callumkal spread the map out on the extendable board for Jade and Vendoin. Tactfully, no one mentioned the disagreement over it at their first meeting. Callumkal said, “Delin told us that the regions the forerunners must have occupied have not been mapped.”
Jade shrugged her spines. “Delin knows more of the forerunners than we do. There are no Raksuran stories about them.”
“That seems very odd,” Vendoin said. “There are a great many stories throughout the Kishlands of the different species who lived there before us. Not so many of the foundation builders, granted, for they seem to have come before all the others.”
After the discovery of the underwater city, the mentors at Opal Night had gone through their libraries looking for old forgotten legends. There had been nothing. The fact that the Raksura and the Fell had once been one species was referenced in many of the older stories, but there was nothing about what that species might have been like.
Chime and Delin had wondered if Opal Night was actually the first court, if the forerunners had come to the Opal Night mountain-tree when it was young, and had decided to camp there. If they had built the city that the roots of the tree had destroyed uncounted turns ago. If the fringe of the Reaches was where they had met the Arbora. There were no answers, though there were lots of questions.
And Moon might jus
t be overly suspicious again, but he got the distinct feeling that Callumkal and Vendoin thought the Raksura were holding out on them. He noticed Kalam was staring at him, which didn’t help any. Kalam seemed to notice he was staring, and looked hurriedly away. That didn’t help either.
There wasn’t much room left around the map, so Moon sat down to wait, knowing Jade would go over it all later for the others. Kalam hesitated, then moved around the cabin to sit next to Moon.
“What are those jars for?” Moon asked, since sitting in awkward silence was worse than awkward talking.
“Oh.” Kalam looked around as if he had forgotten their existence. “They hold samples of the different growth materials of the ship, the ones that suspend it off the ground, the ones that protect it. In the jars, you can see if the samples need to be sprayed with water, or other fluids we can prepare. If they do, there’s a good chance the materials of the ship need tending too.”
It sounded like a wise precaution. “So this ship was grown in Kish?”
“Yes, by the Kish-Latre. That’s what we call them. You can’t say their name in Altanic or Kedaic or any of the other trade languages. They live under mounds of earth in the jungles, and they grow all sorts of plants and molds that can be used for a lot of different things.” Kalam hesitated. “Will you tell me something about Raksura?”
Moon saw they were almost done with the map, so an escape would be available soon. Vendoin was explaining something to Jade about wind patterns affecting trade and habitation in the sel-Selatra islands and there was only so long Jade was going to listen to that. “Maybe.”
Kalam ducked his head, a gesture that Moon wanted to read as shy, though he wasn’t sure if it meant the same thing for Kalam’s species. “Is it true you weren’t always a consort? Scholar Delin mentions it in his book.”
“I was always a consort, I just didn’t know it, because I had never seen a Raksura before.” Moon read Kalam’s confused expression and explained, “I was an orphan. It’s a long story.”