Jade told him, “Yes, as fast as the boat can go.”
Balm asked, “Should I scout ahead?”
Stone still sat on the rail, scanning the horizon. “I didn’t see anything up there. And if they followed us, we don’t want anybody in the air to give away our location.”
Jade told Balm, “Wait till we get past the islands.”
Magrim turned to go to the steering lever and get the boat moving. Chime, chafing Rorra’s wrist, said, “I wish we had some tea to give her.”
“I’m all right.” Rorra’s voice was still a harsh croak, but she was only shivering a little now, and her color was better. “I need to tell you what I saw. Stone says it’s important.”
Jade stepped over and sat down on the deck next to Moon. “Tell us.”
The boat swayed as Magrim turned it. Rorra took a deep breath. “Stone put me down in the water some distance from where we believed the Fell were. I swam for perhaps two hours before I found them. As we thought, they had forced the gleaners to build a platform for them. It was large, nearly as big as our ship, with the dome shelters atop it. There was a great deal of floating debris around it, some plant matter and also pieces of what I thought must be gleaners’ corpses, and bits of the platform itself, as if parts of it had collapsed at some point.” She pulled her shirt more tightly around her. “They didn’t see me. I can see through water to the surface, better than most beings. My eyes are designed for it. I floated just slightly under the surface with the flotsam and watched them. Dakti were perched on top, perhaps keeping watch, about thirty or so of them. I saw one kethel, sleeping on an open section of the platform. Perhaps smaller than those that attacked last night.”
She coughed and Kalam handed her a water flask. After a drink, she continued, “I watched for some time. I was hoping to see more kethel, or something to tell me how many there were. Then finally three Fell came out onto the platform where the kethel slept. I described them to Stone later and he said two were rulers in groundling form.” She looked at Moon. “They looked like you, but their skin was very pale, with no color to it at all. And their hair was . . .” She made a helpless gesture. “Different. I might have mistaken them for Raksura, if I hadn’t seen Raksura before.”
Moon nodded grimly. Chime muttered, “We get that a lot.”
Rorra continued, “I didn’t have a good angle of view, but they seemed smaller, about Root’s size. The third being was larger, female, with scales that were dark like yours, and wings, but the textures were different. Her head had a heavy crest like the rulers, but she also had those things.” She pointed to Jade’s back. “She spoke to the rulers, though of course I could hear nothing. Several dakti came out to listen too. She . . . patted one on the head.”
River made a noise of disgust.
“Then the kethel woke, and slid into the water suddenly. I was afraid . . .” She hesitated. “Terrified, actually, that they had sensed me somehow and sent it after me. I stopped resisting the current and let it carry me away from the platform, until I thought I was far enough away. Then I swam back to where Stone was waiting for me.”
There was silence for a moment. Moon bit his lip, and said finally, “It could have been a half-Fell, half-Raksuran warrior.”
“Would the rulers have listened to a warrior?” Jade sat back and shook her head. “And why keep a crossbreed warrior? It would just be an inferior kind of ruler, to them.”
Stone said, “That’s what I thought. It’s got to be a ruler-queen.” Moon met his gaze and Stone looked away toward the sky again. What might be in the city was bad enough, Moon thought. This is worse.
Kalam had been quiet, listening carefully all through Rorra’s description. He said now, “You’re saying that Raksura and Fell can interbreed. Is that because you are both descended from forerunners?”
“Probably,” Moon said.
“Does Delin know about this?” Kalam asked.
“Uh . . .” Moon looked at Jade. If someone had to make the decision whether or not to reveal to the Kishan that a crossbreed Raksura might be able to open a sealed forerunner city, it wasn’t going to be him.
Jade looked tired. She said, “Yes. But I want to wait to talk about this until we return to the others.”
In Raksuran, River said, “If it’s a queen, we’re in trouble.”
It was a vast understatement. The last half-Fell half-Raksuran queen they had encountered had a queen’s ability to keep Raksura from shifting. It had taken both Jade and Pearl to kill her. Her voice dry, Jade replied in Raksuran, “Really? You think so?”
River snarled, “Somebody had to say the obvious and Root isn’t here.”
Balm snorted a laugh, and tried to turn it into a cough. Kalam said, uncertainly, “What are you saying?”
“We’re talking about how much trouble we’re in,” Moon said.
Chime’s expression was drawn in thought. “So are these two different flights then? And not one flight nesting in two places? And if they are, which one attacked us last night?”
“Good questions,” Jade said. She pushed to her feet and faced the bow, every line of her body radiating impatience. “We need to get back.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The wind had changed slightly so it took longer to get back than Moon had hoped. It was full dark by the time they spotted the lights of the sunsailer. The stench of dead kethel, coming from the corpse left on the beach after last night’s battle, tainted the air.
There hadn’t been much to do on the way back, except take turns scouting and listen to Chime, Jade, Balm, and even River speculate about the Fell’s plans and purpose. It wasn’t as bad as listening to the Arbora do it, but Moon found it annoying enough. Stone must have too, because he retired to the back of the boat to talk with Magrim.
Rorra felt well enough to stand up and finish dressing, and to get her boots back on. Then she fell asleep. Moon mostly answered Kalam’s worried questions and tried not to overthink everything. The fact that this flight had at least one Raksuran crossbreed with them was just more confirmation that their and Delin’s speculation had been right all along. The Fell must be certain it was a forerunner city, even if the Kishan weren’t.
Though the Fell who had managed to open the underwater forerunner city had specifically needed a half-Fell half-Raksuran consort, as close to what a forerunner looked like as they could come. The question that Moon most wanted the answer to was whether the reason the Fell hadn’t managed to get into this city yet was because they couldn’t find the doorway, or because the crossbreed queen wasn’t close enough to a forerunner to make it open.
“I wonder what court she’s related to,” Jade had said, frowning into the distance as the sky and sea darkened around them.
“Some eastern colony that was overwhelmed and destroyed.” Balm’s shoulders twitched in an involuntary shudder.
That thought was too close to home for Moon. But unlike Opal Night’s eastern court, there hadn’t been a Malachite to search for survivors and retrieve their half-Fell children. Moon didn’t want to think what life would have been like for Shade and Lithe and the others if they hadn’t been found and brought to the Reaches.
“You think there’s a progenitor, still? Back in that hive somewhere?” Chime asked uneasily.
“A progenitor voluntarily sharing power over the rulers with a part-Raksuran queen?” Stone snorted. “I doubt it.”
It was a relief when they came within range of the sunsailer, and one of its distance-lights crossed the bow. Rorra waved, and the Kishan on guard on the deck waved back. “Doesn’t look like there’s been another attack,” Balm said. She was in groundling form, and the cool wind lifted the curling strands of her hair. “They must be waiting until tonight.”
Chime said, “Merit said he was going to try scrying again, but I guess Bramble wouldn’t have much to do, unless the Kishan let her help with something.”
Stone made a “humpf” noise.
“What?” Jade asked him. “She didn’t have
much to do on the flying boat, either.”
Stone said, “There’s a lot more trouble to get into here than there was on the flying boat.”
Magrim maneuvered their craft alongside the sunsailer’s hull, and Moon and the others caught the lines tossed down by the crew and tied them off at Rorra’s direction. Two ladders dropped down and everyone started to scramble up the side. Callumkal waited on deck, saying, “Were you successful? We’ve made a great discovery here.”
“A discovery?” Kalam asked, eyes alight with excitement. “The city?”
Moon swung over the railing, realizing Callumkal looked, and sounded, more excited than Moon had ever seen him. He hadn’t seemed this agitated when the Fell had attacked. Beside him, Chime muttered, “Uh oh.”
Callumkal said, “Delin discovered the location of the doorway!”
“Oh,” Jade managed, after what Moon was sure was a moment of stunned dismay, because that was what he was feeling. She added, “How?”
“Delin was able to interpret some clues, but it was Bramble who really made the breakthrough.” Callumkal was obviously proud to deliver this good news. “We couldn’t have done it without her.”
Balm, River, and Chime all looked at Jade, wide-eyed. Jade somehow kept her spines from lifting, and said, “I’m sure you couldn’t.”
Of course not, Moon thought. Stone said, “I told you so.”
“We didn’t mean to find it.” Bramble sat on the floor in the cabin they had been given. “Things . . . just got out of hand.”
Delin had been absently combing his beard. “It is not their fault. I had no idea we were so close. I meant to delay—”
Both Arbora looked tired, and Bramble in particular smelled strongly of saltwater and sea wrack. “He said to stop digging, but I had water in my ears, and I didn’t hear—”
Merit, who had withdrawn across the room and was pointedly sitting near Jade, said, “I told her not to do it.”
Moon buried his face in his hands. Briar, Root, and Song perched on the bench, all being very quiet. Balm and River had been told to go out on the top deck to watch for Fell and had seemed glad to do it.
Moon didn’t even think Jade was angry at the warriors. Warriors just weren’t used to telling Arbora what to do. Especially younger warriors like Briar, Root, and Song, when faced with a mature Arbora like Bramble. Moon would have been happy to tell her what to do, along with Stone, and also Balm, who was used to relaying Jade’s orders and anticipating what those orders were going to be. River probably wouldn’t have been bad at it either, and Chime, having been an Arbora himself, would have been even more effective. But none of them had been here.
Bramble, glaring at Merit, said, “That’s not helpful.”
Jade flicked her spines in a way that signaled everyone really needed to shut up now. She said, “Delin, tell us what happened.”
Delin sighed. “I had been thinking about the possibility that the entrance was underwater, placed there either as a protective measure, or because the sea did not yet reach the foot of the escarpment when it was built. This morning I proposed to Callumkal that I take a rowing boat back over to the ancient dock and look at the carvings again. Bramble was bored with idleness and Merit’s help was not needed with those wounded last night, so they came with me, along with two Kishan to manage the boat.”
Jade looked at the warriors. Song said, “We were guarding the boat, and we took turns flying over to the dock, to keep watch on them.” Briar and Root nodded, and Root added plaintively, “It’s the way we keep watch on the Arbora at home.”
Jade just gestured for Delin to continue.
He said, “As we examined the carvings at the base of the escarpment, the wind had died, and the water was much calmer. Bramble decided to try to explore the steps and the area below the dock that Stone had briefly examined.” He spread his hands. “I suggested it might be dangerous, but she was confident of her abilities.”
“I imagine she was,” Jade said, her voice dry. Bramble was finding something absolutely absorbing in the loose threads on the tail of her shirt.
“So she began to dive down to the sand at the base of the dock structure.” Delin added, “She can hold her breath for an inordinate amount of time. I knew her capabilities by that point, so I was unsurprised, but the Kishan were impressed.”
“And what did Merit do?” Moon had to ask. He didn’t want Bramble taking all the blame.
Merit bit his lip and squinched his eyes nearly shut, as if trying to recall. Delin said, “He took clumps of sea wrack and made them glow, to illuminate the area underwater where Bramble was searching.” He gestured to Bramble. “You should explain the rest.”
“It was these symbols in the carvings on four of the pillars,” Bramble said. “They weren’t anywhere else we had seen so far. They looked decorative, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe they were a symbol for ‘opening’ or ‘pathway.’
“I looked underwater, in the sand between each of those four pillars, and I found broken rock, like there was a causeway,” Bramble continued. “But whatever that causeway led to isn’t there anymore. But then I went back up onto the docks and I started to look on the wall of the escarpment, above the carvings the Kishan had already found. I saw a spot fairly far up, where just the shape of the rock looked curved. It looked like a larger version of that symbol was there, and that the rock was on top of it, somehow. So we swam over to the escarpment and climbed up about twenty paces toward the spot I saw—And then part of the rock came off in my hand.”
“It turns out it’s not rock, not on that section of the cliff, it just looks like it,” Merit put in. “It’s like coral, it’s all drilled through with tiny little worm tunnels. Some plant or animal or plant-animal grew up the wall of the escarpment at some point, and then died, and it left this coating that weathered to look just like rock. It’s still very hard down at the bottom, where the Kishan were searching. But it was more breakable further up the wall.”
“And we kept knocking it off,” Bramble finished, “and we found the symbols, and a seam.”
Jade was leaning forward now, absorbed in the story. “A seam for an opening?”
“A big one.” Bramble waved her arms. “There’s a huge door in the cliff. We didn’t mean to find it, and it wasn’t Delin’s fault. He started yelling and waving at us, but we were so interested we didn’t hear him.”
“I thought he was cheering us on,” Merit said with another wince. “The Kishan on our boat saw it, and then a big section fell off and everybody saw it. It’s a really big door. Big enough to sail this boat through.”
“They stopped, then, so the door is not completely exposed,” Delin said, “and we still are not certain of how to open it. But—”
“But now there’s a door,” Jade concluded. “And all the Kishan know about it.”
Delin conceded, “Yes.”
Chime said, “And the Fell will know, as soon as they see it in daylight.” He turned and gave Merit a shove to the shoulder.
“Ow,” Merit protested.
Jade said, “Merit, I thought you were going to scry while we were gone.”
Merit looked at the floor, lifting one shoulder in a not-quite-shrug. He suddenly looked very young. “I tried, but I didn’t get anything,” he admitted reluctantly. “I thought maybe if I stopped for a while and helped Bramble and Delin . . . I don’t know what’s wrong. I should be seeing something about what the Fell are doing now, or the city, but I just get images of water.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Maybe he’s trying too hard, Moon thought. But Merit usually did his best work when he was trying too hard. Frowning, Chime said slowly, “Maybe there’s just too much going on right now.”
Stone groaned, leaning his head back against the wall. Watching Jade anxiously, Bramble said, “I’m sorry we found the door. Is it really that bad?”
They didn’t know about today’s discovery yet. Moon glanced at Jade, and got a nod. He told them, “We found the Fell, nesting i
n two different places. Rorra got close to one group and saw a crossbreed queen.”
Bramble’s mouth dropped open. Merit made a choking noise. Even the usually unflappable Delin looked alarmed. He said, “You think they will attack again tonight?”
“We’re sure of it,” Stone said. He pushed to his feet. “We need to get out there.”
Jade was up and sweeping out the door before anyone else moved. As the warriors followed, Bramble leaned forward and caught Moon’s arm. “Tell her we’re sorry, Moon.” She looked miserable, and Merit didn’t look much better.
“She knows you are. It’s all right,” Moon told her, trying to sound reassuring. Jade was under a terrible amount of pressure, and she probably blamed herself for this; she needed a little time to just be angry. Moon didn’t think it was necessarily anybody’s fault for Arbora acting like Arbora and doing a thorough job of anything they put their minds to.
“You’re all idiots,” Stone said, gave Bramble a shove to the head, and walked out.
Bramble slumped and sighed in relief. “Stone still loves us.”
“Just get some rest,” Moon told them, and followed Stone out.
Stone and Chime were waiting for him down the corridor by the door to the deck. Chime whispered, “How much trouble do you think we’re in?”
“A lot,” Moon said honestly.
Stone growled under his breath and stepped outside.
Moon sat up on the roof of the cabin on the topmost deck, the metal still warm from the day’s heat. The thin sliver of moonlight slid in and out of the clouds, casting an occasional silver illumination on the waves washing up onto the beach, or the tops of the broadleaf trees. The wind tugged at his spines and frills, and danced across his scales.
Chime, sitting behind him and facing the west, said, “Jade’s right, you should be inside.”
As a consort, Moon was a prime target for a Fell flight who had successfully produced crossbreed Fell-Raksura. He was also tired of being reminded of it every other heartbeat. If there was anybody here supremely conscious of that fact, it was him. He said, “Can we stop talking about that?”