Moon peered around the nearest fluted edge, trying to get a better view. The outline of the Hians’ flying boat was just visible where it floated above a pod at the far end of the structure. No lights showed in the cabin windows and no one moved on deck.
Moon lifted up a little for a better angle. In the growing light the ruin was even larger than they had thought, with dozens of the huge flower-pods forming a curving forest around the open central area. It looked a little like the docking stalks of the swampling port, and Moon wondered if those had been built in imitation of this strange place. A causeway like the one that had extended out over the bay lay a few hundred paces below, and led to a large building like a pile of domes and spheres. It had obviously been deserted a long time, with scars and jagged holes in its white stone. Bands of carving decorated it, faint colors still visible on the reliefs, and steps led up from the causeway to a large round doorway at its base. Platforms extended out from the sides supporting clumps of vegetation, including a few tall trees with long elegantly curved branches, bare of all but a scattering of leaves.
The building didn’t look like it was made of the same material as the flower pods. It looked like someone else had come in after the forerunners and plunked it down. Which was exactly what happened to so many old ruins, everywhere Moon had traveled, new people moving in and adding things to what was already there and using it for new purposes. So maybe it was a little reassuring to see.
Chime, crouched behind Moon, whispered, “How big is this place?” Moon looked away from the ruin. Far below their perch, the dim morning light gradually revealed a landscape of lush green grass cut through with deep rocky gorges and clouds of mist. Like a plain had been dropped from a height and shattered, with streams of water finding their way through the deep cracks. To the west rose a low range of blue hills. Moon had never seen a flying island this large. “So we really are on the cloudwall,” he said, keeping his voice low.
“I didn’t want to believe it either,” Jade muttered from above. “Get ready. There’s no one at the fire weapon stations.”
She leapt into the air and snapped her wings out. Moon scrambled up the pod after her. Behind him, wings flapped and claws scratched across the pod as the others took flight toward the Hian boat.
Jade lit on the cabin roof above the nearest fire weapon balcony, on the port side above the stern. Moon landed atop the next cabin over. As the warriors dropped down, Jade made a sharp motion toward the fire weapon stations on either side of the stern. “Two of you get down into those balconies and make sure the Hians don’t get near the weapons.” Briar climbed into the one on the port side and Saffron motioned for Flicker to take the other.
Shade landed next to Moon and set Lithe on her feet, then Jade leapt over their heads to reach the next cabin roof. Lithe had shifted to her Arbora form, something she only did reluctantly. She still looked like an ordinary Arbora, except her scales were more prominent and were matte black, the color of a consort or a Fell ruler.
Moon leapt forward after Jade and followed her up to the steering cabin. Balm motioned for Root to take the remaining fire weapon station above the bow. The other was just a still-smoking hole in the upper hull, parts of its platform hanging from the ropey vines that must stabilize the boat’s exterior walls. Moon turned toward Jade, then realized Root hadn’t obeyed, and was still crouched on the cabin roof, as if hoping Balm would tell someone else to guard the remaining weapon. Chime and Saffron were watching the doors in the stern and hadn’t noticed.
He wants to go inside with us and kill Hians, Moon thought. He sympathized, but this was no place to argue or disobey Jade and Balm. If a Hian got to one of the big weapons, she could kill anyone still in the air. Balm hissed at Root, who ignored her. When Moon tried to catch his gaze, Root finally turned reluctantly and dropped into the weapon station.
Moon exchanged a frustrated look with Balm. Jade, engaged in hanging upside down to look through the windows into the steering cabin, didn’t notice the moment, or pretended not to. She straightened up to whisper, “It’s empty.” She signaled to the warriors in the stern, then swung down to land on the stairs leading to a hatch. Moon glanced back to make sure Shade and Lithe would stay put on the cabin roof for now. Shade acknowledged him with a flick of spines.
With the fire weapons secured, Stone swept in to circle the boat, then came in low above it. He shifted in midair and dropped lightly onto the roof of the steering cabin. Balm and the other warriors climbed down to enter a hatch in the stern. Moon followed Jade to the stairwell.
He swung down behind her just as she pushed the hatch open. It was made of the same green-gray moss material as the rest of the boat, but reinforced with metal. Moon hadn’t had much chance to observe details last night, but had noted how heavily armed this flying boat was compared to Callumkal’s.
Just inside a passage curved toward the steering cabin and a set of stairs led down. Light still came from the globes in the ceiling, and Moon couldn’t hear any movement. Jade tasted the air and flicked a spine in surprise. “Do you scent that?”
Moon tasted the air again, more deeply. It was so dry and still that it didn’t carry a lot of scent, but this time he caught it. It was blood, and burned flesh, and the foul scents when a body voided itself at death. There was more than he expected; he didn’t think he and Stone had killed that many Hians. “That’s odd,” he whispered back.
Almost soundless, Stone stepped through the hatch behind them. He said quietly, “Something’s funny with the bottom of the boat.”
Jade started down, her foot claws curling silently around the steps. “What do you mean, ‘funny?’”
“I mean a chunk of it’s missing,” Stone clarified. He told Moon, “Where we put the bug paste.”
Jade glanced back at them, baffled, then apparently decided not to ask. Moon said, “Does it look like something took a bite out of the boat?” He was wondering if the insect-lizards had been more virulent than they had seemed and had eaten away the moss. Or if it had attracted something bigger.
“It’s not a ragged edge,” Stone answered. “I think—”
Jade hissed at them to be quiet. She had reached the bottom of the stairs. Ahead the corridor curved around toward the interior of the boat. The scents of death were stronger, the odor of burned flesh mingled with seared moss. As they followed the curve around, Moon saw an open doorway ahead. Jade stepped to the wall to take a cautious look inside, then motioned for Moon and Stone to come forward.
Moon looked over her shoulder into a sleeping room with padded shelves for beds. On the floor three Hians sprawled, all dead, with ugly burn wounds. From their positions it was clear two had been caught by surprise and one had been fleeing into the room.
Jade looked at Moon, scaled brow lifted, as Stone stepped around them to see. They had been killed with Kishan fire weapons; nothing else could do that. Moon said, “It wasn’t us.”
Jade shook her head slightly. “Then either someone attacked the boat after it got here, or they turned on each other.” She stepped away from the door and moved down the corridor. “As if we needed more mysteries. Come on.”
Moon followed with Stone, listening carefully, every sense alert. The idea of the Hians turning on each other was hard to imagine, but it was also hard to imagine people living up here who had the same weapons as the Kishan. Had the Hians just been that shocked by the sudden transition to the cloudwall that it made them all go mad? That couldn’t be it, Moon thought. He was betting it was something Vendoin had done. Maybe some of the crew hadn’t been here willingly, and had taken the opportunity to turn on their captors.
They stopped at each room along the corridor, quietly snapping the locks if the doors were fastened. They found more dead Hians, all killed by fire weapons. Stone said, “We need to find Vendoin.”
Moon agreed. There had been no shouts, no alarm sounded, so the warriors searching the stern must not have met anyone alive yet either. Jade muttered, “If we can just find the weapo
n, I’ll be happy to leave this boat here to rot.”
The corridor ended in a junction with another stairwell, where a wide passage went toward the steering cabin. Another Hian body lay there, collapsed in a heap beside the wall. Jade kicked it over. Though part of the face was burned, Moon had a jolt of unpleasant recognition. He said, “I think that’s Bemadin.”
Jade flicked a spine in assent, frowning. “With any luck, we’ll find Vendoin next.” She started up the passage to the steering cabin.
They found a more lavish set of rooms just below it that had to be meant for the Hian leaders. There were thick braided grass rugs, and light silky drapes over the beds, and dishes of a thin glazed pottery with bright metal rims. They split up to search the rooms, looking in every container and cubby, at first certain the artifact would be here somewhere.
Except it wasn’t.
Moon opened a roll of paper and found the pages blank, then remembered that Hians could see colors that Raksura couldn’t. He shifted to groundling just long enough to run his more sensitive soft-skinned fingers over the top page, and felt the faint indentations in the pressed plant fiber where a pen had left tracks.
From across the passage, Stone said, “In here.”
It was a room for storing the devices groundlings used for navigation. Stone stood in front of the open cabinet where the maps were kept, some on wooden panels, others in fabric rolls, and more recent ones sketched on thick paper. Stone had done a quick search, opening all the cabinets and any bags or boxes, even the ones that weren’t large enough to hold the artifact. The rock Bramble had described sat in a padded container. Moon ran his hand over it but there were no seams, nothing to indicate there was anything inside.
“Found this.” Stone pulled a wooden box out of the cabinet. It was about the right size, empty, with its lid smashed. Stone sniffed it, then shook his head. “Can’t tell.”
“It could still be aboard,” Moon said, but it was beginning to look like whatever had killed the Hians had been after the artifact, too. And while something might have come silently out of the plain during the night, it was far more likely these dead Hians had brought their enemies with them.
Jade came down from the steering cabin, frustration quivering in her spines. “It’s not there, either.”
They returned to the lower level to check the rooms along the curve of the passage, and found a few more dead Hians, but still no sign of Vendoin. Hissing in frustration, Jade turned down the stairs toward the stern.
This corridor was wider and ran straight through the ship. Jade reached the first junction in one bound, and cocked her head to listen. Catching up with her, Moon heard the faint voices of the warriors. Jade called out, “Balm, did you find anything?”
A flutter of movement came from the stairwell, then Saffron poked her head up through it. “We just found a barricaded door. Something’s alive on the other side.”
At the bottom of the stairs was a wider junction with two passages and a large door that probably, from Moon’s memory of Callumkal’s flying boat, went to a common room. Metal bars had been braced across it, keeping it from sliding open. Unlike the sealed door Moon had broken open to free Callumkal, these looked hastily and sloppily shoved into place.
Balm stood beside the door, while Deft and Saffron kept watch on the other passages. Chime crouched on the floor and dug at the moss along the bottom with his claws. Balm told Jade, “We found dead Hians scattered all through here.”
Jade moved a spine in acknowledgement. “So did we. Any sign of Vendoin?”
“Not yet.” Balm added, “We found bodies in the supply stores, like they’d been forced in there and then killed by fire weapons. The jars and boxes had been dragged around, like someone had removed some supplies. There was a room up on the level above this one where ten Hians were laid out, all with broken necks or like they were smashed against something—”
“Uh,” Moon interrupted. “That was us. Probably. When we got the Arbora and the groundlings out.”
Saffron twitched her spines but didn’t otherwise react. She had seen Moon and Stone fight before. Deft turned to stare, then hastily looked away when Stone met his gaze. Jade flicked a spine impatiently, and Balm continued, “This is the only room we found blocked off like this.” She glanced down at Chime.
He sat up and reported, “Still just breathing, no movement.”
Moon crouched down with Chime, and helped him pry up another section of moss. “If they locked themselves in last night, and then had some of the water Bramble poisoned, they might be still unconscious.” Or the Hians inside could be lying in wait with their fire weapons, a possibility no one needed to mention.
Jade’s tail lashed once in decision. “Balm, Saffron, pry the bars off. Don’t get in front of the door.”
Moon pulled Chime up and out of the way. Balm and Saffron got the first bar off, then the second. They braced themselves as Jade stepped forward. Chime stirred uneasily, and Moon held his breath, every nerve going tight. If one Hian was awake, pointing a weapon at the door . . . Then Jade slammed through the barrier. Balm and Saffron lunged after her.
Something clattered inside, but there was no characteristic whoosh-thump of a fire weapon. Moon pulled Saffron out of the way and looked in.
It was a big common room, with a small square stove for holding heat-spelled moss. Jade had landed on the far wall, and Balm stood in the broken remains of the door. Several Hians sprawled on the floor and one on a padded bench seat, all apparently unconscious. At first glance, none had been wounded, though some had been messily sick. Moon looked for the water source and spotted it on the far wall: a narrow copper-colored pipe, running down from the ceiling and ending in a curved tap with a lever.
Jade leapt down from the wall and used her foot claws to roll the first Hian over. Balm said, “This door was braced from the inside, too.” She nudged a stool which had been taken apart and jammed into the door.
Chime leaned in behind Moon. “So these Hians barricaded themselves in here and whoever shot the others blocked the door from the outside, so they couldn’t get out? And then left them here?”
“Nice people,” Saffron commented succinctly.
Moon looked around but there was nowhere to conceal anything, no containers or cabinets, and the Hians’ light clothing left no hiding places. The artifact’s continued absence was making his back teeth itch. It was gone for a reason, and it wasn’t going to be a good reason.
Jade prodded another unconscious body with a foot. “Tie them up. And collect any of those small fire weapons you find. We’ll take some onto the wind-ship and dump the rest overboard.”
Chime said, “So where did the people who did this go?”
Stone said, “I think I have an idea about that.”
While the warriors continued to search for the artifact, Moon and Jade followed Stone to the bottom of the boat, finding a single small stairwell that led down. The hull curved in here, and there were no cabins, just cubbies and storage racks mostly filled with moss canisters and the supplies for making moss grow. A heavy acrid scent clouded the air.
Then the passage ended in a narrow circular stair, and Moon caught the scent of outside air laced with death. A slow draft drifted up the stairwell. Stone crouched to look. “This is it,” he said, and started down the steps.
Below was another dead Hian, with fire weapon wounds in her chest and the side of her face. The fire had actually burnt away the armor plate on her skin.
Stone had already stepped past her and stood beside an open section in the floor. “This wasn’t here last night.”
Moon stepped to the edge. The opening looked down on the curving stem of the nearest pod and the rising mist that concealed the bottom of the ruin. He crouched down to stick his head through.
“Careful,” Jade said.
He felt her hand in his frills, ready to jerk him back. “There’s nothing down here,” he said. He could see the hull on either side, where it extended down to frame a whole
section of the flying boat that just wasn’t here anymore. Stone was right, this was the spot they had put the bug paste on, but it hadn’t been eaten away by anything. He drew back to look up at Stone. “So there was a separate piece of the boat here?”
Stone nodded. “Has to be. And the missing Hians are on it.”
“How could that happen?” Jade’s expression was baffled. “A piece of the boat couldn’t fly by itself, not unless it had a motivator . . .” She trailed off. “Unless it did have a motivator.”
Moon had a sudden realization. “The little flying boat on the island, the one that the Fellborn queen stole. Maybe it was like this, part of a bigger flying boat. Callumkal must have left it there for Kellimdar and the others when he went back to Kish-Jandera for help.”
Jade snarled, “No one told us these damn things could come apart.” She controlled her spines. “We need to find the artifact. If it’s not here, and it probably isn’t, at least Dranam can still track the smaller boat. It’s made of the same moss as this one.”
Looking thoughtfully down toward the misty expanse below, Stone added, “At least they left some Hians to tell us what happened.”
When the captive Hians started to wake, Jade sent Flicker, Deft, and Saffron back to the wind-ship to report to Diar and Niran. Shade and Lithe came down inside the boat to help with the search for the weapon, though it seemed more and more unlikely that it was still here. But as Chime put it, “We have to search every handbreadth of this boat. If the Hians who left didn’t take it with them, we’re going to feel awfully stupid.”
Moon and Jade went up on deck when the warriors landed with Bramble, Kalam, and Delin. Setting Delin down, Saffron reported to Jade, “The wind-ship is following us, and the other groundlings are doing the thing they need to do with the moss to track the Hians.”
Moon was glad to see that Bramble and Delin looked better than they had last night. Bramble’s eyes were clear again and her scales were bright. Delin’s face seemed less sunken and bruised, and he headed down the deck toward Chime with more of his old energy.