Kalam still looked furious. “They told us what you found,” he said. “Stone is right, some larger air-going craft have small portions that can be steered independently. Dranam can still follow it with our moss samples, so unless the motivator on this ship is damaged, I don’t know why they would take the smaller craft.”
“The Hians we found alive were barricaded in a room, so we think the others had to take the small boat to get away,” Jade told him as they started down the deck. “We need you to help talk to them, so we can find out what happened.”
“The weapon is not here?” Delin asked. “You are sure?”
“We’re still searching the hold,” Jade said, “but it’s more likely they took it with them when they left.”
Jade led the way through the hatch and down the first set of stairs. Moon found himself beside Kalam and asked, “Is Callumkal any better?” They had left the wind-ship so quickly at dawn, Moon hadn’t had a chance to find out.
“No. Not yet,” Kalam said. “Ivar-edel and Merit said this morning that there hasn’t been enough time for the poisons to wear off.” It was an optimistic answer, but Kalam didn’t seem as if he believed it himself. He added, “At least he is with us now, and cared for, and not in the power of that lying traitor.”
Moon tried to think of something encouraging to say that didn’t sound like he had no concept of reality. Ivar-edel, Merit, and Lithe might all be very good healers, but none of them had any experience with Jandera.
They reached the room with the captured Hians. Balm stood on guard outside. Inside, Stone leaned casually against the wall, the Hians clustered on the far side of the room. A big one was on the floor, cradling an injured arm. They stirred uneasily when Moon and Jade stepped in. The air was tainted with sickness and some Hians slumped against the wall, as if too ill to sit up straight. Jade glanced at the one with the injured arm, and asked Stone, “Something happen?”
“Idiots tried to rush me,” he said.
Jade turned to Bramble and Delin. “Do you know anything about them?” She spoke Raksuran.
As first Bramble, then Delin looked in, the Hians seemed startled to see them. One turned to another and said in Kedaic, “It’s the prisoners.”
Bramble leaned in the doorway and eyed them thoughtfully. She pointed. “That one, the small male, served food to Vendoin. And that female, she was a guard on our cage sometimes.”
Delin nodded agreement. “I have seen them in passing, only, when I was taken to the steering cabin to speak to Vendoin.” He pointed to one. “She is called Vinat, and seemed to be in charge of the other guards.”
Jade flicked a spine in acknowledgement and switched to Altanic to speak to the Hians. “Where is Vendoin?”
They stared at her with that same apparent lack of expression that had made Vendoin so hard to read. Moon shared an irritated glance with Stone.
Then Kalam slipped through the doorway past Bramble and Delin. “Do you know me?” he asked Vinat. He was trembling a little. The Hians might interpret that as fear or nerves, but Moon knew Kalam well enough to tell it was anger. “Callumkal, who you held prisoner, is my parent. You poisoned our companions, and killed five of them.”
Vinat’s gaze went to the fire weapon slung across Kalam’s back, then strayed to Bramble and Delin, but she said nothing.
Kalam’s fists clenched. “Where is Vendoin? Where is the artifact she stole?”
Vinat said in Kedaic, “Why are you with these animals?”
Moon was unsurprised, and Jade’s spine flick showed bored annoyance. Kalam quivered, as if the desire to fling himself at Vinat’s throat had just passed through him. He turned to Jade and said in clear Altanic, “If they don’t answer, we should kill them.”
Jade tilted her head, pretending to consider it, but Moon saw the doubtful angle of her spines. He didn’t think that was the right path to take. The Hians expected Raksura to be savage and kill them. If that was the case, there was no motive for them to talk. On impulse, Moon said in Altanic, “Did you know they locked you in here?”
The Hians all stared blankly at him. He continued, “There were metal bars fixed over the door. Is there another way out? Because I don’t see one. I don’t see any way to control the boat from in here, either. It looks like they couldn’t make you come out, so they took the small flying boat and left you to die on this one, trapped in this room.”
Stone stepped out, then returned with one of the bent metal bars. He tossed it on the floor.
Jade said, “Who left you here? Was it Vendoin? We know it wasn’t Bemadin. We found her dead in the corridor below the steering cabin.”
Two Hians flinched. Moon noticed the small male had fixed his gaze on the corner, not reacting. Moon said, “Did you kill Bemadin?”
Vinat made a faint noise that sounded like derision, but the male seemed to shrink in on himself. Then the male said, “If you agree to release us, I’ll answer.”
Vinat sat up and said in Kedaic, “It will do no good. The animals mean to kill us anyway.”
The male answered in the same language, “The others turned on us, killed so many, why protect them?” He waved at the bent metal bar. “They meant us to starve to death in here, drinking poisoned water.”
Vinat leaned back against the wall. It was hard to tell if the argument had swayed her or not. The one who seemed the most ill stirred a little and said, “We owe them nothing, now. You’re the highest rank. Act to help us who are left, not those who abandoned us.”
“She is right,” Delin said, watching them. He had lost enough weight that his features were sharper, and it made the degree of calculation in his expression more evident. “Vendoin has left you behind in this strange place. Did she know there was some power in the ruin that would take her flying craft to the cloudwalls?”
The response to this seemed to be blank astonishment.
From the doorway, Chime whispered in Raksuran, “They don’t know where they are.” There was a stir as Balm nudged him to be quiet.
“Yes,” Delin said to the Hians’ silent shock. “The darkness that fell abruptly was a magic, which has taken this ship up to the flying island formation called the cloudwalls. Our friends’ ship was taken as well, and we have no notion how to return the same way, or if it is even possible for a flying craft to make its way down from here.”
Vinat hesitated, apparently disbelieving. Kalam added, “It’s true. And we don’t care about you, or what you do after this, or where you go. It’s Vendoin we want.”
The male said, “Lavinat betrayed Vendoin and Bemadin.” Vinat turned toward him as if she might try to stop him. Then she slumped against the wall, clearly realizing the words were out and nothing could call them back. The male continued, “Lavinat killed Bemadin.”
Not that the words were that helpful. Moon remembered Lavinat from the confrontation in the bow, but he wasn’t sure what it meant that she had betrayed Vendoin.
Jade turned to Bramble and Delin for an explanation. Brow furrowed in confusion, Bramble said in Raksuran, “That was the other Hian leader. I don’t think she was here the whole time. I got the impression she wasn’t with Bemadin when they caught us in the ocean.”
Delin was nodding. “I agree, I think perhaps she was on the Hian ship—this Hian ship—that we met at the port city, when we left the original ship behind.”
Jade nodded to the young male. “Go on.”
He said, “After everything went dark, Vendoin and Bemadin were trying to decide what to do.” He looked at Stone and Moon and lifted his shoulders in a gesture that conveyed wariness and fear. “They were afraid you would come back. There was a place they had to look for, but Lavinat said they should wait for daylight. I went to Bemadin’s cabin to sleep. Then I heard weapons, I came out. I found her . . .” He looked at the others.
Vinat said, “Lavinat’s cohort were moving through the ship, killing anyone they saw. We made it in here, and barricaded the door.”
“Vendoin isn’t here,” Jade said. ?
??Maybe she betrayed you too.”
“Why?” The male asked. “She was leader, we followed her.”
Jade eyed him skeptically. “Then what caused the fighting?”
There was another hesitation. Moon glanced at Jade, got a spine flick that told him to go ahead. He said, “We know about the weapon. We know Vendoin is going to use it to kill all the Fell, Raksura, Jandera, and any species related to them from here to the eastern sea.”
The others all looked at Vinat. She said, “It was Fell, when we started this. It was all meant to kill Fell, that’s what they told us. Then the Fell appeared and Aldoan had the weapon on the deck, and they took her, and . . . It killed Aldoan, and the scholar who was going to help Vendoin, and all her family. Bemadin and Vendoin became afraid that it meant the weapon would kill Hians as well. There seemed no other reason for Aldoan’s death. Our physician examined her body and there was no wound made by the Fell. She said there was bleeding in the brain, but no sign of a break to the skull, nothing else that could have caused it.” Vinat looked at the wall, her body going stiff and stubborn. “That is all I know.”
Thoughtful, Delin twisted his fingers in his beard. “Does the physician live?”
Another Hian said, “We don’t know. But she was in Bemadin’s cohort, not Lavinat’s.”
The little male said, “Bemadin was angry at Lavinat.”
The others turned to stare at him, but more in surprise at what he said than anger that he was talking. He continued, “Bemadin came to her quarters the night before—” He threw a clearly nervous look at Moon and Stone. “The night before all this happened, before we reached the sea. She said Lavinat had abandoned her senses. She wouldn’t tell me why. That is all I know.”
Jade waited, but none of the others spoke. She motioned for Bramble and Delin to retreat, and stepped back through the doorway, tugging Kalam with her. They went a few steps down the passage, out of earshot of the Hians. Moon followed, with Stone pushing off from the wall to stroll after them. Moon said, softly, “‘Why’ is a good question.”
“If Lavinat and Vendoin disagreed over how or when to use the weapon, and it turned to violence, it could work in our favor,” Delin put in, as Chime stepped closer to listen.
“It can’t work in our favor yet,” Jade said. “We’ve still got to find them.”
Flicker called from the stairwell, “Jade, the wind-ship is here.”
“We need to go.” Stone’s voice was an impatient growl. “We can’t wait around here to figure this out.”
“I know.” Jade tilted her head at Kalam. “What should we do with them?”
Kalam didn’t hesitate. “Leave them. It’s Vendoin I want to find. But we should take the levitation packs they have aboard, and disable the ship’s weapons. Rorra will know how to do that quickly.”
“Go with Flicker and tell Rorra to get started,” Jade said, and Kalam moved hurriedly to the stairwell.
Once he and Flicker had climbed out of sight, Jade turned to Bramble and Delin. “What do you two think we should do?”
Jade had given Kalam the impression she was letting him make the decision, but Moon knew she had only been asking for his opinion. Kalam wasn’t the only one injured by the Hians.
Chime stood with Bramble and Delin, watching, while his spines flicked uncertainly. The other warriors were still by the door, keeping guard on the Hians. Only Balm had her head tilted in their direction, unobtrusively listening.
Delin glanced at Bramble, then said, “Not kill them, not on my account at least. I don’t see how we can wrest the weapon from Vendoin without killing her and perhaps the others with her. That will be a necessity, this is not.”
Bramble stared at the deck, flexing her foot claws. Then she said, “I’m not mad enough anymore to make it easy.” She lifted her head. “So we should do what Kalam said, and leave them.”
Jade met Stone’s gaze. “Well?”
Stone lifted his brows at Moon. Moon didn’t want to leave the Hians alive. Except then he pictured himself killing the little male, and knew that just wasn’t going to happen. That one might be considered a mature adult by Hian standards, but there were too many things about him that read “fledgling” to Moon. And leaving him alone without the others was worse. Vinat seemed to be the only capable one left, and without her, the others would die. They might die up here anyway, but that was their doing for following Vendoin in the first place. He said, “Leave them.”
Stone shrugged. “It’s Vendoin I want.”
Jade’s spines moved in assent. “All right, we’ll leave them.”
Moon felt he had to ask, “What about Root?” He wasn’t even sure if a warrior got any say in something like this.
Jade hissed in mingled annoyance and resignation. “He’s in no state to give his opinion on anything, that’s why I left him on guard on the deck. Come on, let’s go.”
Not long after, the wind-ship was underway, following the direction Dranam was able to tease out of the moss samples. Moon had heard her tell Rorra, “It’s a relief. I was a little afraid it wouldn’t work in this strange place.”
While they were waiting for Dranam to work on the moss, there had been a discussion about how best to pursue the small flying boat. Stone was in favor of flying ahead to try to catch it. Moon had to admit that it sounded like a good idea to him, too. The night had seemed long, but the little boat couldn’t have more than a few hours head start.
But Jade had refused to consider that. “Not here. We don’t know anything about this place.”
Niran agreed. “There could be anything out there. And now that we have managed to retrieve everyone who was missing, I feel we should stay together.”
Stone folded his arms. His expression would have still been opaque to most observers but Moon recognized the stubborn set to it. Stone said, “We don’t know how far they have to go. If they get there ahead of us and use this thing, the first we’ll know of it is when we drop dead.”
Niran grimaced down the deck at the young Golden Islanders who were sorting through the fire weapons taken from the flying boat. They didn’t know yet if the artifact would affect the Islanders.
Moon had to point out, “The Hians don’t know how to use it. We don’t even know if they know where they’re going with it.” Obviously the Hian scholar in the river trade city had been an important part of Vendoin’s plan. Not having access to her or her writings had already thrown Vendoin into confusion. That was probably the reason that Lavinat had seized control, not any change of heart on Vendoin’s part.
Rorra, who had been listening quietly up to this point, said, “Jade is right. You and Moon crossing the outskirts of Kish and the far south is one thing. But we’ve already seen one forerunner ruin and we know the forerunners and the foundation builders fought something terrible. Something could still be trapped up here.”
Stone eyed her for a long moment, while Rorra glared at him. Moon could tell she was actually glaring this time, that it wasn’t just her habitual frown. Then Stone said, “All right.”
Rorra lifted her chin a little self-consciously. “Then will you come and tell the kethel to get away from the stern hatch so we can set up a weapon placement?”
“Sure.” Stone followed her away down the deck.
Jade watched them go, brow furrowed. “What just happened?”
“He likes her,” Moon said. Stone would have obeyed Jade, though there would have been more arguing and growling first. But while Stone listened to groundlings and gave their opinions weight, he had just given Rorra’s fear for his safety the same consideration that he would have given to a queen. His queen.
Chime nodded agreement. “He does.”
Jade stared blankly at them. Niran shook his head and turned for the door to the steering cabin. “Don’t tell grandfather, he’ll write a monograph on it.”
As Niran left, Jade said, “But Stone wouldn’t sleep with a groundling.”
Moon snorted.
Jade turned to him. “Wh
at was that?”
“Nothing.”
Chime was still thinking it over. “How would—I mean, what if your parts aren’t compatible?”
Moon told him, “There are ways around that.”
Jade was still watching Moon, scaled brows drawn down. Moon wasn’t sure if it was Raksuran sensibilities being offended or the fact that Stone was a consort, even if he was a line-grandfather. He sighed and clarified, “In all the turns Stone’s been away from court, wandering around, you don’t think he’s ever done that.”
Jade had looked down the deck toward where Stone and Rorra had disappeared. “This is not something we’re going to tell Pearl. Or anyone. Whatever happens on this wind-ship, it doesn’t get back to the court.”
Now Jade had gone up atop the cabins to take over the watch so Balm could get some rest. Moon thought it was also so she could see as much of this strange place they were traveling through as possible, to get some idea of the dangers. It was why he was out on the bow deck.
As the wind-ship angled further from the ruin, it was more apparent the structure stood on tall narrow pillars that stretched up out of a lake. The mist still lay across the water, an indication that there wasn’t much air movement near the ground. At least finding water isn’t going to be a problem, Moon thought. It was a lack of game he was worried about. They couldn’t even start looking for a way down until they got the artifact back, and they had no idea how long they would be stuck up here.
He heard a faint scrape of claws on the deck behind him, and turned. It was Root.
His spines drooped as he stared at the receding Kishan boat. Moon said, “You all right?” Moon hadn’t really had a conversation with him since he and Stone had left the others to search for the Hians. Maybe since Song had died.
“Yes.” Root absently dragged his claws over the deck. It left faint scars on the tough plant fiber.
“You don’t look all right.” Moon wasn’t good at this. He hated to talk about what was wrong with him, and so never felt inclined to make other people talk about what was wrong with them. Stone was better at it, but he was down in the stern staring intimidatingly at their kethel. He wrestled with his reticence, and asked, “What’s wrong?”