Stone landed on the curve of the flower pod below the flying boat. The kethel caught the broad stem lower down and curled itself around it.
Jade raised her voice so the warriors could hear. “I’ll go first. I want Stone with Merit behind me. Moon, I want you and Shade last.”
Moon didn’t argue. If the Hians, or something else, was down there waiting to trap them, Jade would be expecting him and Shade to keep the path clear for the warriors to escape.
Jade dropped off the rail. Stone reached out a hand for Merit to climb into, then followed. Balm, Saffron, and Briar dropped after them, then River and Deft. Moon nodded for Chime to go ahead with Lithe, then he and Shade jumped off the rail.
As Moon swept down to the land on the first ledge inside the shaft, he caught a dark shape at the edge of his vision. He almost yelled an alarm, then realized it was Kethel again, dropping to cling to a ledge not far above them. Shade hissed in exasperation. Moon considered telling Kethel to get out of here, but he doubted Kethel would listen. And if something awful was living in the ruin, maybe Kethel would be a deterrent.
Jade had already leapt down the ledges to the spot where the shaft narrowed. There weren’t a lot of perches down there, so Moon waited. He flexed his claws impatiently, noticing the material the structure was made of felt more like stone than metal. There were streaks of dark blue under the coating of ice and grime.
Stone slipped down into the narrowing shaft first, vanishing into the darkness in a way that made Moon distinctly uneasy. Then Jade and Balm. As the other warriors dropped down to follow them, Chime waited with Lithe.
The wall under Moon’s claws shuddered. Below, Chime jolted forward and caught hold of the ledge with one hand. Lithe’s head turned to look up at Moon, her frills catching in Chime’s nervously flicking spines. Below them, Deft and River hesitated, still clinging to the ledge just above the twist where the shaft narrowed. Moon couldn’t see the others, already vanished into the dark opening.
“The whole thing moved,” Shade whispered. He was right, it felt like the whole structure, and whatever it stood on under the water, had jerked a few paces. “You think the Hians—”
The jolt was so hard it knocked Moon off the ledge. He skittered down the wall, his claws screeching on the surface until he caught a rough spot and managed to stop. He was only a pace above Chime and Lithe. Lithe had reached over Chime’s head and hooked her claws on the ledge above.
The wall shook so hard it felt liquid under Moon’s claws. He looked down for the others but River and Deft had disappeared. Shade shouted a warning as the shaft rippled like water, like a wave, and it was coming toward them. Moon yelled, “Go, go, Chime, up!”
It wasn’t coherent but Chime obeyed instantly, scrambling up the shaft toward Shade. Moon climbed after him, sparing another desperate look down. The narrow part of the shaft buckled, the material bent and crumpled, closing off the opening. They got through, Moon told himself in horror. They had time to get through.
He made it up to Shade just as Chime and Lithe took the leap to the flying boat. Kethel had one clawed hand on the railing, holding the boat closer. With Shade, Moon leapt for it and felt the deck roll under him as he landed. He staggered into Shade, who had caught hold of Chime’s arm and kept him and Lithe upright.
That was when Moon realized the sky spun overhead, that the whole huge docking structure below had started to turn. Kethel swung aboard the flying boat and clung to the bow, but the anchor lines gave way with a sound like something’s spine snapping. The deck came up and slammed into Moon; he sunk one set of claws into it and held onto Shade.
The moss boat tumbled, bounced off something, then slammed into something else. Moon shoved himself upright, hooking his claws into Shade’s collar flange to keep them together.
The wind roared in his ears and most of the flying boat was gone. The whole starboard side had sheared off from a few paces in front of them to the stern, only two walls of the upper cabin left. The stem-beams stuck out from the hull, bare and broken, and moss came off in chunks. The boat had hit one of the metal ship’s huge sails. To Moon’s relief, Chime and Lithe had managed to hold on, huddled against Shade’s other side. Kethel’s big dark shape still clung to what was left of the bow.
Everything was moving and Moon’s sense of direction and of up and down was useless. He squeezed his eyes shut briefly, trying to center himself. No, it wasn’t his sense of direction that was confused, it was everything else. The docking structure had started to rotate and was dragging the huge metal ship along with it. Moon’s throat went tight and he thought, did the Hians do this?
The rest of the flying boat could come apart at any instant. They were lucky the moss hadn’t unraveled yet and tangled in their wings.
Moon twisted around and spotted the curve of a wheel, attached to a mast. He tugged on Shade. “This way!”
Shade shoved upright and pulled Chime with him. Chime swayed, dazed, Lithe keeping him on his feet. Shade pulled her against his chest and passed Chime to Moon. Moon pulled him close and Chime instinctively clung to his collar flanges. “I think I hit my head,” Chime muttered woozily. “What happened?”
“Tell you later,” Moon said, as a crack appeared lengthwise down the deck. He leapt to what was left of the railing, then told Shade, “Go!”
Shade said, “Watch the sail,” and dove off the boat. He snapped his wings out to get lift from a gust, then in again to miss the sail and land on top of the wheel just past it. He swung down to brace himself in the wide groove below the rim.
“He’s been practicing,” Chime said, then made an oof noise as Moon leapt into the air.
The wind caused by the motion of the ship and the docking structure made the air into a rapidly changing maze. Moon had to drop sideways twice, tossed like a puffblossom, before he landed on the wheel and swung down next to Shade. He clung there, breathing hard. Looking back, he saw Kethel push off from the flying boat, barrel roll past the sail and drop onto the lower part of the wheel. The shift in weight was enough to push what was left of the flying boat free. It hit the sail and burst into pieces, torn away by the wind. It could have done that earlier and killed us, Moon thought. They were lucky. Sort of lucky.
Voice raised to carry over the rush of air, Shade said, “Did you see what happened to the others?”
Moon moved his spines in a negative. “They were inside. River and Deft went after them.” They had to be alive. He had to think that or he wouldn’t be able to do what he had to do.
“What was it? What did this?” Lithe asked. Then answered her own question. “The weapon?”
“Has to be,” Chime said, and his voice sounded stronger, less woozy. “The Hians must have figured out how to make it work.”
Jade climbed down inside the narrowing shaft, tasting the air for any sign of the Hians. The ledges continued to wind down the sides, but the interior walls were embossed with flowing wave-like designs, that vanished into the darkness as sunlight from above faded. Dim blue illumination, part of the flowing pattern along the walls, provided just enough light to see. It reflected off slender curving pillars that supported the interior. If they aren’t too far ahead of us, she thought, we can—
A sudden jolt knocked Jade into the nearest pillar. She snapped her wings in by instinct and caught herself, her claws scraping across the silvery stone. She lifted her head to see Balm hurtling toward her. Jade let go of the pillar and caught her. The force of it slammed them backwards.
But Jade had control of their fall now and landed them both on the curve of a lower pillar. She gripped it with her foot claws, supporting Balm, and looked frantically for the others.
She spotted Stone first, his tail and one set of foot claws wrapped around a pillar on the opposite side of the shaft. He had Briar in one hand and Merit in the other. Above him, Saffron perched next to River, who had Deft under one arm. Jade didn’t see anyone else. And something had cut off the light from the top of the shaft. She hissed in terror, then tighte
ned her spines down. Panic wasn’t an option.
Balm clamped onto the pillar with her claws and gasped, “I’m all right.” She shook her spines out as Jade carefully released her. “Are we moving?”
“Yes.” The whole shaft, maybe the whole structure, was rotating, Jade felt it in her gut and the back of her head. She called up to River and Saffron, “Where are Moon and the others?”
River said, “They were above us.” He turned and craned his neck to look up. “I think they were still near the top.”
The constriction in Jade’s chest eased a little. She said, “Saffron, can you get up there and see if the shaft is blocked?”
Saffron’s spines signaled assent as she swung past River and started to climb.
None of the others seemed hurt. River set Deft on the pillar next to him, keeping a hand on his arm as the dazed warrior recovered. Stone curled around the pillar to set Briar on a perch. Merit climbed up his shoulder to hop over and sit next to her. Then Stone flowed up the pillar, following Saffron.
Jade watched him go, every nerve tight.
“You think the Hians did this, made it start moving?” Balm hooked her claws on their perch and leaned out to look down.
With effort, Jade made her voice sound even and ordinary. “They must have. This wasn’t a coincidence.” Below the shaft narrowed again, the pillars twisting towards each other, forming more of a climbing structure. The Hians had to be using their flying packs, which meant they had been able to move down through here almost as quickly as Raksura could.
Balm hissed in realization. “Delin said the Hians had magic that could make rock move. These walls don’t feel like stone, but—”
Jade wanted to groan aloud and managed not to. “They caused this, they know we’re here.”
From above, Saffron called down, “Part of the wall came off, and it’s wedged into the narrow part of the shaft. There’s a lot of broken pieces around it. The line-grandfather is trying to push it free.” A clanking noise echoed from above and a scatter of debris rained down. Saffron spread her wings and dropped to a pillar closer to Jade and Balm so she could lower her voice. “I didn’t see or scent anyone. There’s no sign anyone was in there when it happened.”
Meaning she hadn’t seen or scented any sign of blood or smashed bodies. Jade took a full breath to calm her pounding heart and moved her spines in acknowledgement. Moon wasn’t crushed in the wall collapse, and Chime, Shade, and Lithe were with him. If there was any group of Raksura who could take care of themselves in a strange situation, it was them.
Balm stretched to look up, twitching back as more debris clattered down into the pillar. “Maybe we could use the fire weapons, but—Do we have time?”
“We could split up,” River contributed from above. “Some of us stay here and try to dig out . . .”
Jade flexed her claws as she considered it. We could already be too late. The Hians were somewhere below them about to use the weapon. And they already know we’re here. “We have to go on. Stone!”
After a couple of thumps and more debris, Stone dropped out of the shaft, caught the pillar above Briar’s perch, and wrapped himself around it. He shifted to his groundling form and said, “I can’t get through, not in a hurry.”
Jade twitched her spines in acknowledgement. “We’ll find another way out, once we stop the Hians. Briar, Deft, can you fly?”
Deft said, “Yes, queen, I’m all right,” and unfurled his wings to prove it.
“Yes, Jade.” Briar spread her wings cautiously, then picked up Merit.
“Then come on,” Jade said, and dropped down the shaft.
Chime jolted forward and Moon grabbed a flailing arm to pull him back to their perch. The wheel shuddered like the whole ship was about to come apart.
Moon pulled himself to the upper rim. From there he had a view past the sail. As the whole docking structure turned, dragging the ship with it, clouds formed overhead. Below the water and ice chunks swirled into a vortex. He thought of the whirlpool that had pulled the sunsailer out of the foundation builder city. “This could be bad,” he said.
“You think?” Chime gasped, then levered himself up a little to look. “Oh. Oh no, not again! No, wait.” He hesitated, just as Moon felt the change in altitude in his stomach and the back of his neck. “We’re moving down!”
From below, Lithe said, “This has to be the weapon. It’s doing this!”
“We’re not dead yet,” Shade pointed out. “We still have time.” The wheel jerked again and he added, “Maybe.”
Kethel climbed up the wheel but stopped several paces below Lithe and Shade. Moon didn’t think it was his imagination that it looked anxious.
I need to see what’s happening below us, Moon thought. He let go of the wheel and stood up, clamping his foot claws to hold on. The wind gusted hard and he swayed with the motion but from this angle he could see the docking structure had moved down, pulling the ship with it. Below, the gray water churned, but there was something beneath it, something blue.
Sky blue, he thought, and caught a glimpse of brown and gold. Grass, a grass plain. A groundling might not have been able to see it, but Raksuran eyes identified it as a grass plain, seen from a great height. “It’s a passage!” A massive jolt went through the ship and metal groaned, the wind rose to a shriek. The wheel shuddered again and Chime grabbed Moon’s leg as he swayed. “It’s a passage through the air.” Moon dropped to a crouch to steady himself. “It’s making an opening to someplace else, someplace below us, maybe so the Hians can use the weapon.” That had to be it.
Chime’s spines flicked in consternation. “That makes sense, sort of. Bramble said that they might need to be up high for the weapon to reach all the way out to the east. Like if you drop a rock from a height the—”
“I got it,” Moon said. He just didn’t know what to do about it. Something the Hians had done below was making the ship open a magical passage in the air. And if Jade and the others were dead down in the shaft, or trapped there . . .
Then Shade said, “We have to stop it, or—Can we move the ship? Make it drag the docks back up? Or maybe push it down to the ground, so the weapon can’t get all the way to the Reaches or Kish.”
“Yes! That might work.” Chime steadied himself on Moon’s arm and lifted up to a tentative crouch. “We need to find a steering cabin.”
Moon gripped Chime’s hand, anchoring him so Chime could stand. He tightened his hold on the rim and Chime as the ship jolted again and the wind pushed at them.
Shade had eased to his feet, trying to see. Then Lithe climbed down toward Kethel, ordering it, “Lift me up!”
Moon yelled, “Lithe, don’t—” Shade snarled, “Lithe, no—”
Lithe yelled, “Quiet, both of you!” Kethel swung up toward her, clambered atop the wheel, and clamped on with its foot claws and tail. It closed one hand carefully around Lithe and lifted her up.
Chime dropped back beside Moon, and said, “She has to—I couldn’t see anything.” He added nervously, “I’m just glad I didn’t think of it first.”
Moon was too busy wrestling with his instinctive urge to go rip the kethel’s eyes out. Shade’s low frustrated growls said he felt the same.
Lithe scrambled up atop Kethel’s hand as high as she could. The wind made her frills flare out. Both she and the kethel swayed as the ship spun even faster. They leaned far to one side and Chime made a faint squeak of alarm.
Lithe twisted around to look toward the other end of the ship and squinted against the wind, her face a grimace of effort. Then she dropped back into Kethel’s hand. It lowered her to the wheel and opened its fingers so she could climb out. She pointed toward the far end of the ship. “I saw a raised chamber that way. It’s the only thing that looks like a steering cabin!”
The people who had built this thing might be sightless and steer it from somewhere deep in the hold, they had no idea. But this was worth a try. Moon said, “Shade, you take Lithe; we’ll follow you.”
Shad
e swept Lithe up and crouched, then made a leap down to the next wheel. Shade had to partially extend his wings to make it, and slipped sideways on a harsh gust of wind with an easy competence. Moon glanced at Chime to make sure he was all right. Chime moved his spines in assent, and said grimly, “I can do it.”
Moon dove after Shade. He landed on the next wheel and looked back. Chime fought the wind awkwardly through the leap but landed next to Moon with spines flared in tension. Kethel followed, swinging easily down.
After more jumps made dangerous with the increasing wind and motion, they reached the lee of the next giant metal sail. Moon spotted the big globe that Lithe had identified as a possible steering cabin. It sat just atop the center of a cone-shaped web of heavy metal cables and struts, and the light caught glints off large curving crystal windows. Moon felt a spark of hope. It looked as if it was connected to a large part of the ship, reminding him of the connecting tendrils of a Kishan water boat’s motivator. Lithe was right, this might be it.
Shade reached it first and landed on the rounded top of the globe. Moon hit the side and slid down to hook his claws on top of a wide window. He pressed his face against it, trying to see in, but the interior was heavily shadowed. Chime landed on the side and scrabbled for a hold on the big cable just below the curve. He called, “Hey, I think this is the door!”
Moon pushed off from the window and dropped down to the cable. It was made of braided skeins of metal, jointed like armor, and attached to a conical base beneath the globe. Clinging to his cable, Chime pointed. Below was an elaborately twisted piece of metal that Moon realized was a staircase, very like the one inside the flower pods at the first ruin. He swung down to it, landed on a step, and saw the stairs led to a round doorway in the base of the globe. The stairs blocked the wind a little, and must be firmly anchored; Moon couldn’t feel the movement of the ship nearly as much.