The Cloud Roads

  “And you have only his word for that.” Pearl stopped, half turning to show Stone her profile, as if she was reluctant to confront him. “What did you have to give him to bring him here?”

  That was another slap. Moon gritted his teeth, looking away. Everything he had taken from them—food, the clothes he was wearing, even Stone’s protection while he was poisoned—flashed through his head. He had accepted it all with the idea that he would act as one of their warriors; Pearl had to know that. She wanted to drive him away, and he knew why.

  That Moon was here as a potential consort for Jade somehow gave the younger queen power, taking it away from Pearl. Moon hissed under his breath. If Pearl wanted to drive him out, she was going to have to try a lot harder than this.

  As if called by his thought, another voice, sharp with irony, said, “I’ve left gifts. He’s taken none of them.” The warriors on the ledge parted abruptly for a light blue form, the only other Raksura in the room who hadn’t shifted to groundling. She stepped off the ledge and landed lightly on the paving. She was smaller than Pearl, the same height as the other warriors. The silver-gray pattern overlaying her scales was less complex than Pearl’s brilliant indigo, and the frilly spines of her mane weren’t as elaborate. Her jewelry was silver, rings, armbands, and bracelets, and a belt worn low above the hips with polished ovals of amethyst and opal. Moon had only caught two glimpses of her before, but this was clearly Jade.

  She stalked forward, radiating barely contained irritation, her gaze on Pearl. “The things he accepted from the Arbora are only what they would give in hospitality to any visitor.” Her voice hardened into a snarl. “Try your claws on me, why don’t you.”

  Pearl moved away from her, her lip curling in contempt. “You’re a child. You have no responsibility in this court and you’ve made no attempt to assume any.”

  Jade’s laugh held little amusement. “You say that as if it’s what you want.”

  Stone broke the moment. “That isn’t what we came here to discuss. The Arbora want to go to a new colony. Our lines haven’t flourished here, and you know it as well as the rest of us do. All the consorts of my line are dead, Rain is dead, and your last clutch didn’t survive to—”

  Pearl rounded on him, hissing. “I don’t need you to remind me of that!”

  Evenly, unaffected by her anger, Stone said, “Then what do you need?”

  After a moment she stepped away from him, shaking her head. “We have too many Arbora and too few Aeriat. We can’t leave this place, not now.” Her hands curled into fists. “I’ve waited too long. I take the blame for that.”

  Flower stepped forward and suddenly had the attention of the entire room. It gave Moon some insight into just how much power the mentors actually held. Among all the larger Arbora and the tall warriors, Flower should have been a slight, insignificant figure, but every Raksura here turned to listen. She said, “It’s not too late. There are ways around the lack of Aeriat. We don’t all have to go at once. We can make the journey in stages.”

  Pearl hesitated, though Moon couldn’t tell if she was giving the suggestion serious thought or not. Then she paced away. “It’s too dangerous. We would die in stages.”

  His voice tight with irony, Stone said, “We’re dying here, and that started before you let the Fell in.”

  Pearl turned toward him, her mane flaring in challenge. “What do you want from me?”

  “You know what I want.” Stone let the words hang in a fraught silence. When Pearl looked away, he said, “I’ll settle for your word that you’ll agree to move the court if I can get the means to transport the Arbora safely.”

  Pearl laughed, more annoyed than amused. “Your plan is ridiculous,” she said, sounding exasperated. “I think your mind has finally turned.”

  Stone smiled, showing his teeth. It was somehow a far more threatening gesture than it should have been, and a ripple of unease went through the ranks of warriors. But he only said, “Then you have nothing to worry about.”

  Pearl watched him a moment more, then she turned her gaze to Moon, contempt in every line of her body. “I want your solitary gone from this court.”

  Moon glared narrowly back at her and tried to shift, tried it with everything he had. He felt the change gather in his body, felt it burn in his chest, but he couldn’t push past whatever power Pearl still held over him. But when he said, “Then make me leave,” it came out in the deeper rasp of his shifted voice.

  Pearl’s face twisted into a snarl. “Get out of my sight!”

  That he was willing to do. Moon snarled and turned for the door, barely noticing as the Arbora scattered out of his way. He strode down the passage to the landing, every step further away from Pearl’s presence a relief. The others came out behind him, and he pounded down the stairs until he felt the pressure in his chest ease and knew he could shift again.

  He left the stairs at the next landing, and headed blindly down a corridor until he found an opening to the outside. He shifted and jumped out, meaning to glide down to the foot of the pyramid. His head still swam from the effort of trying to shift against Pearl’s restraint, his heart pounded with rage.

  Distracted, he sensed something above him and snapped into a sideways roll. A dark green warrior shot past him, his stooping dive turning into an awkward tumble. Moon felt his lips pull back from his fangs in a silent snarl. They weren’t high enough in the air to play this game.

  He turned back toward the pyramid and landed on a broad ledge. Hissing angrily, the warrior banked around and tried to angle in at him, his wings beating hard. Idiot, Moon thought.

  Moon leapt up, caught the warrior’s ankle and yanked him out of the air. The hissing turned into an outraged yowl, cut off abruptly as Moon swung him against the upper ledge. The warrior snapped his wings in to protect them and tried to dig his claws into the stone to scrabble away. Moon pulled him down, caught him by the throat, and pinned him to the wall. The warrior bared his fangs; he could have sunk his claws into Moon’s wrists, or lifted a foot and tried to disembowel him. Moon should have torn his throat out.

  Instead, he followed an instinct he didn’t know he had, and drew himself up, flared his spines out, and leaned in. The warrior’s eyes went narrow as he tried to avoid Moon’s gaze. Then his spines, crushed against the stone, began to wilt as the furious resistance leaked out of his body. Knowing his point was made, Moon said softly, “Don’t do that again.”

  The warrior jerked his head in response. Moon released his throat and stepped back. He half-expected to be tackled off the ledge and for it all to start over again, but instead the warrior shifted to groundling. He was a lanky boy, turns younger than Moon, with a shock of red hair, dark copper skin, and a deeply embarrassed expression.

  Several warriors circled the air above them, and Moon was sure two of them were River and Drift. No one else dove for him. Moon turned and leapt off the ledge again.

  He glided down toward the teachers’ court. As he landed on the soft grass, he startled a flock of tiny flying lizards. They burst into alarmed retreat in a flurry of gold and violet wings.

  Moon shifted back to groundling, and there he stopped, leaning one hand against the gritty, moss-covered stone of a pillar. He wanted to get out of this place. He wanted to fly in the cool air or float in the river, but he didn’t want anyone to think for one heartbeat that he had run away. At least there’s no question of fitting in anymore, he told himself bitterly. That bird had flown a long time ago.

  Stone’s great dark form landed in the center of the court, crushing some flowering bushes and almost flattening a small tree. He set Flower on her feet and then shifted to groundling.

  “That went well,” Flower said dryly, as they started toward Moon. She winced. “Moon, you’re still bleeding.”

  “Let me see.” Stone reached for him. Moon jerked away with a half-voiced snarl. Stone cuffed him in the head so hard Moon stumbled into the pillar. “Stop that. And don’t shift,” Stone snapped.

  Moon s
ubsided, unwillingly, remembering that he really didn’t want to fight Stone. Flower hurried away, disappearing through the archway into the common room. Stone took Moon’s shoulder and turned him around, pushing his head down to look at the cuts.

  “Ow,” Moon muttered.

  “You shut up. Flower—”

  “Here.” Flower was back, handing Stone a wet cloth that smelled of something earthy.

  Stone pressed it to the back of Moon’s neck. Whatever was on it stung at first, then cooled the cuts. Stone said, quietly, “Pearl isn’t... It’s not supposed to be that way.”

  Moon set his jaw. “You said she was sick, not...” So bitterly angry that she was blind to everything. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “We don’t know.” Flower leaned on the pillar, looking up at him, a sad twist to her mouth. Other Arbora had reached the court, gathering in the common room and talking in soft, worried voices. “It could be disease, or just all the loss. Her last two queens’ clutches, the ones that should have given Jade consorts and sister queens, were stillborn. Then Rain died. He was the last of the consorts of her generation.”

  “It isn’t always this bad.” Stone sounded weary. “She was better yesterday.” To Flower, he said, “We need to make plans. Send someone to get the maps.”

  “Petal already has.” Flower tugged on Stone’s arm. “That should be enough. The grenilvine works quickly.”

  Stone pulled the cloth away and stepped back. Moon turned around, feeling the back of his neck, startled to find scabs instead of open cuts. Flower took the blood-stained cloth away from Stone and stood on her tiptoes to look at the wound. She nodded to herself, patted Moon on the arm, and walked back inside.

  Stone watched him, giving nothing away. “Are you staying?”

  Moon had regained enough self-control not to snarl the answer. “I said I would.”

  Stone’s smile was a thin line. “Yes, you did.” He turned away, and Moon followed him into the common room.

  He caught many sideways glances, worried, uncomfortable, unreadable. Petal, Rill, and several others pulled cushions and mats out of the way, clearing a large space on the floor. More Arbora came in; Moon recognized Knell, the leader of the soldiers, and Bone and some of the other hunters. Balm and several other warriors followed them in; they looked uneasy, but no one objected to their presence.

  Then Chime and Bell carried in a big, rolled-up hide, nearly twelve paces long. They put it down on the floor and unrolled it, pulling the edges to spread it out.

  Moon stepped closer, unwillingly interested. It was a map, carefully drawn in black, blue, green, and red inks on the soft surface of the hide. Everything was drawn in broad strokes, with mountains, rivers, and coastlines sketched in lightly. He had never seen a map this large, showing such a vast area of the Three Worlds.

  “We’re here.” Stone stepped out onto the map and tapped a spot with his foot. It was a star shape next to the blue line of a river. “From here, I could get across and out of the river valleys in three or four days.” His brows drew together as he studied the faded ink below his feet. “That’s eleven or twelve days for our warriors, more when they’re carrying Arbora. And we still have a long way to go after that.”

  “Eleven?” Distracted, Moon padded across the map, looking for the Cordans’ valley so he could trace their route here. Stone’s pace, judging by the trip from Sky Copper, was one day to what would have been three at Moon’s pace. “You mean nine.”

  “I mean eleven,” Stone said. “Consorts and queens fly faster than full grown warriors. And I wouldn’t be pushing them as hard as I pushed you. You’ll get faster as you get older and bigger; they won’t.”

  Moon grimaced—something else he hadn’t realized. He had noticed that Chime and Balm flew at a more leisurely pace, but had thought that was just because they hadn’t been in a hurry. He found the spot that might be the Cordans’ river and followed it up into the vague outlines of a mountain range.

  Balm said, “But Pearl was right. We have more Arbora than Aeriat, plus we’d have to carry supplies for the journey, and everything we’ll need at the new colony. It would be taking an awful chance to split up the court like that.”

  Knell the soldier seconded that with a grim nod. He was powerfully built like Bone, but not nearly as grizzled and scarred. “It would take several trips, and we’d be vulnerable both here and at the new place. It would give the Fell plenty of time to attack.”

  Bone scratched the scar on his chest. “You could abandon most of us.”

  Several people hissed at him, Aeriat and Arbora. Stone gave him a bored look. “And we could all eat each other before the Fell arrive. That would solve our problems, too.”

  “Now that we’re done with the daft suggestions,” Flower prompted. “Anyone have anything sensible to say?”

  Moon crouched to examine the area where he thought Star Aster might be, but the places indicated were all marked with glyphs in a language he couldn’t read. He said to Stone, “So you’re thinking of something to transport everyone in. Like a boat?” Though navigating an unknown river could be almost as slow and dangerous as walking.

  One of the smaller Arbora, sitting at the edge of the map, asked, “What’s a boat?”

  “It’s a thing some races of groundlings use to travel on water,” Petal explained.

  And there’s that, Moon thought wryly. None of the Raksura would know how to sail or navigate a river.

  But Stone said, “Like a boat.” He turned, taking another pace across the map. “Have you ever heard of the Yellow Sea?”

  Moon watched him, frowning. “No.”

  Flower walked over to stand next to Stone, thoughtfully twisting a lock of her hair. “It’s a shallow sea, very shallow, barely a few paces deep in some stretches. Something in the water makes everything yellow—the sand, the plants.”

  Stone nudged a spot on the map with his foot. “There’s a groundling kingdom out there, a remnant of one of the flying island empires. They have flying boats. Raksura have treated with them before, and I’ve been out there a few times.”

  Flower nodded slowly. “That could work, if the boats are large enough.” She lifted a brow, giving Stone an annoyed look. “How long have you had this in mind?”

  “Not long.” He nodded to Moon. “When I went back to your flying island, I looked at the books you found. That got me thinking about other possibilities than just carrying the Arbora.”

  Moon shrugged noncommittally. He remembered the pictures of the people with tentacles. If the flying boats were more manageable than carriages on the backs of giant birds, it might work.

  “You want to transport the Arbora in a flying boat?” Knell said, staring at Stone as if he had shifted and managed to end up with a second head.

  Stone lifted his gray brows, fixing a concentrated stare on Knell. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.” Knell stepped back off the map, making a helpless gesture. “It sounds crazy.”

  “We could still be attacked while we’re moving,” one of the other soldiers said uncertainly.

  Flower still stared down at the blot of delicate color that marked the Yellow Sea, brows knit in concentration. “We could be attacked while moving in the conventional way. With these flying boats, we could move all at once, and perhaps faster, and the warriors would be free to fight.”

  “And we could bring more of our belongings,” Petal said. She had taken a seat at the edge of the map, her arms wrapped around her knees. “Like the anvils for metal-working. I couldn’t think how we were going to move those.”

  There was a murmur of agreement from around the room.

  “How do we get their boats?” a younger male warrior asked, sounding baffled by the whole idea. “Steal them?”

  “You could buy them,” Moon pointed out, exasperated. These people were hopeless. “You’ve got silk cloth, furs, metals, gems. You could buy anything you wanted in most of the civilized cities in the Three Worlds.”

  Stone gav
e the young warrior the I can’t be bothered to deal with your stupidity look Moon knew well from their travels together, then said to the rest of the gathering, “We could bargain to use the boats just for the journey. It’s not like we’ll need the things once we get where we’re going. Like Moon said, we have goods we can offer them in exchange.”

  “We have to try.” Flower glanced at Stone. “Will you go to speak to them?”

  “I’ll go,” a new voice said. It was Jade, standing in the outer doorway. She was still in her other form, her wings folded, so weary that her mane was nearly flat. Moon felt everyone looking at him, or trying not to look at him, and tried not to react. Jade continued, “Stone should be here if the Fell return. And I’ve heard the stories about the Yellow Sea. Solace and Sable and a flight of warriors first visited the groundlings there.” She lowered her head, the scales on her forehead rippling as she frowned. “They were a sister queen and her consort, from an earlier generation.”

  Moon knew she was talking to him; everyone else had to know the story already. Before he could decide whether to reply, Flower cleared her throat and said, “You’ll need to take some warriors, so that would make it a two day flight, but we still need time to pack up the colony. Historically, we’re supposed to be able to migrate at a moment’s notice, but I think that’s a bit optimistic since we haven’t actually had to do it for generations.”

  Jade nodded. “And we are asking the Yellow Sea groundlings to trust us with their boats, even though we’re going to offer them payment. The request will sound better coming from a queen.” She added, more grimly, “And it will get me out of Pearl’s way.”

  “There’s a thought.” Stone eyed Moon in a way Moon didn’t like. He wasn’t surprised when Stone said, “I want you to go with her.”

  The room was very quiet. Moon knew he didn’t have a choice. Refusing would mean embarrassing Jade in front of her people. Considering his own recent public humiliation, he had no intention of inflicting that on anyone else. Especially since she had defended him to Pearl. Moon said, “I’ll go.”