River bared his teeth, but it was a half-hearted gesture.
Moon dropped him, turned his back, and walked away. He had no idea where he was going, just away from the clearing, away from the stares and accusations. His hands hurt, though he couldn’t feel his other bruises yet; Raksuran heads were harder than groundling, so he had had to hit River hard enough to bruise his knuckles.
He was barely past the first stand of trees when Chime caught up with him. Sounding bewildered, Chime said, “Is it true?”
Moon didn’t stop, didn’t look at him. The hurt tone in Chime’s voice just made it all the worse. “Yes. Some of it.”
“But you went to the Fell?”
Moon shook his head. “Go ask Flower. She knows.”
Chime stopped, and Moon kept walking, weaving away through the trees, looking for a quiet spot away from the blind.
At least Pearl wasn’t holding it in reserve to use against him anymore.
Chapter Sixteen
Moon spent the rest of the morning in a tree near the clearing in his shifted form, hanging upside down by his tail from a branch. The hunters kept watch on him, the way they kept watch on all the Aeriat on Jade’s orders, but no one came after him. That was probably for the best, because he was so bitterly angry he couldn’t think straight.
He knew the Fell hadn’t attacked Indigo Cloud because of him; it didn’t make sense. Even if the Fell had shamen that could predict where Moon would be, they had had plenty of time to come after him before this. The Fell had been moving all over the east for the past twenty turns, and so had Moon. And yes, it had been a mistake to go to the Fell in Saraseil, and no one knew that better than him. But if these Fell felt betrayed because Moon had killed the ruler Liheas there after all this time, then that was crazy.
Moon had never faced a ruler before, and he had been younger then and not as strong. He had one chance to escape, and it had been better to wait for Liheas to sleep, even if he had to pretend to believe the lies and let Liheas touch him. And he had no idea why he was trying to justify this to himself. Fell killed groundlings like cattle, tortured them for pleasure, and destroyed their homes; if the Fell didn’t want to be killed in return, that was just too damn bad.
Restless, Moon gripped the branch with his tail more tightly, his scales scraping through the bark. He had no idea if Jade still wanted him after this, if she hadn’t counted on having to tell the others about what he had done in Saraseil, or their reaction to it. If Pearl was telling the truth and Jade already had a clutch, she didn’t need him anymore.
That hurt more than anything.
He knew that Pearl had driven off consorts that had been born into the court because they had belonged to other queens, or because she hadn’t wanted to look at them after her own consort had died. He knew she wouldn’t hesitate to try to drive him off, if Jade did nothing to stop her. His only option would be to fight, to hurt or kill Raksura he had no real quarrel with, to stay in a place where no one wanted him.
That’s if we survive the attack tonight, he reminded himself. They still needed him for the battle at least.
After that... Jade had said that having seen what a Raksuran court was like, he wouldn’t be able to settle anywhere else. She was still wrong, he thought, his anger tinged with that familiar sense of resignation. I wasn’t able to settle anywhere else before this, either.
He tried to ignore the traitor voice that whispered, And if this Fell flight is following you, for whatever insane reason of its own? That meant no more groundling camps or cities, either.
When the shadows were lengthening toward afternoon, a hunter came to the base of the tree and said, diffidently, “Moon? They want you to come and look at the poison.”
What Moon wanted was to hang in this tree until it was time to go be killed by the Fell. But he dropped to the ground, shifted to his groundling form, and followed her back to the clearing.
The others were gathered there, a cautious distance from the pit. Moon tasted the air and knew why. This close to the liquid, the weedy odor had taken on an intensity that made his stomach want to turn.
He stopped at the edge of the group. The hunters and the Aeriat flicked looks at him, and some tried to unobtrusively sidle away. Chime stood over the pit with Flower, watching her stir the contents. He saw Moon and twitched uneasily, turning his attention back to the poison. Jade turned toward him, but Moon avoided her eyes. Pearl, standing at the opposite side of the pit, ignored him.
Moon didn’t see River, who was probably back at the blind, being catered to and sympathized with.
Flower looked up, her face flushed and hot. She saw him and held out one of the nut shells they were using as cups. “Moon, does this color look right? It’s changed from purplish to clear, like the sample in the flask.”
The group parted for him and he stepped forward, just close enough to see the contents of the cup. It had been night when Ilane had given him the poison, but he would have noticed a dark substance in the normally light green tisane. He nodded.
“Good. Now we have to test it.” Flower told the others, “If it needs another boil...”
“Yes, but we can’t test it on you,” Chime said in frustration. “We’ll need you when we enter the colony. Whoever we test it on might not recover in time.”
“Yes, I know, but I always test my simples on myself, and...” Flower took a few steps back and sat down heavily. “I think the fumes are getting to me.”
Chime flung his arms in the air, and Jade said, patiently, “Yes, Flower, that’s what we’ve all been trying to tell you.”
Balm said, “But we do need to test it. If we put it into the water and nothing happens, there won’t be a second chance.”
Behind Moon, someone cleared his throat.
“I’ll do it.”
Moon turned to see the youngest hunter, Strike, who had been the first to greet Jade last night. Strike said, “I want to fight in the battle, but I’m the smallest, so I’m the... most expendable?”
Bone scratched his head, and said reluctantly, “Not expendable, but... You are the smallest, and I’d thought to leave you behind anyway.”
Jade grimaced, watching the boy unhappily. Moon wanted to protest, to offer himself, though that made just as little sense as using Flower to test it. But the whole idea of deliberately putting an Arbora at risk, especially a young one, felt wrong down to his bones. He wished they could catch a dakti to test it on, but there was too great a chance that the other Fell might sense what was happening.
Jade said to Strike, “If you’re certain. If you’re not, tell us now.”
Strike twitched his spines, obviously uncomfortable with all the scrutiny, but he said, “I’m certain.”
Flower took the cup of poison and poured water into it from a skin. She handed the cup to Strike. “Better sit down.”
Strike took a seat on the mossy ground, careful not to spill the clear liquid. He looked down into it, biting his lip. “Should I shift to groundling?”
“Most of the Fell won’t be,” Bone said, crouching near the boy. “We might as well see what it does.”
Jade nodded. “Go ahead, Strike.”
The boy took a deep breath and downed the cup in one long gulp. Everyone watched uneasily.
Birds called in the trees, and somewhere on the far side of the stream a treeling squeaked. After a time, when nothing dramatic happened, some of the hunters started to relax, moving away a little to sit down in the dirt.
Chime began, “Maybe it’s not—”
Then Strike swayed a little, his eyelids drooping. “I’m really sleepy. Is that supposed to...” Suddenly he shifted to groundling and slumped over.
Bone caught him, easing him to the ground as Flower hurried over. She held a hand in front of Strike’s mouth, carefully pushed his eyelids up to look at his pupils, then put her head on his chest to listen to his heart. After a tense moment, she sat up, wiping the sweat off her forehead. “He seems well enough, just deeply asleep.”
>
Moon stepped closer. “Look at his arms.”
Bone turned Strike’s arm and pushed up the sleeve of his shirt. On the boy’s deep copper skin, lines were already appearing, very faint but growing darker, mimicking the scale pattern of his Raksuran form.
It had taken longer to work on Moon, but then he was bigger than Strike. He said, “That’s what it did to me. That’s how they knew.”
Jade looked at Pearl, her spines half-lifted in challenge. “Well?”
Pearl inclined her head, as if conceding a point to Jade. “We’ll go at nightfall.”
Moon hung around the fringes of the clearing as the others hurried to get ready. Strike was carried back to the blind to recover. Some of the hunters left to take a kill so everyone could eat before the battle. The others organized themselves to transfer the poison to waterskins, a messy and dangerous job. After the first one got woozy and had to stagger off, they sent for Niran and reorganized, with him being the one to fill the skins from the pit. The fumes didn’t seem to have any effect on him at all.
The others crouched on the ground nearby. Chime sketched a map of the river and the colony in the dirt. Moon leaned against a tree, just close enough to hear their plans. If they didn’t want him there, they could tell him to leave. Chime was saying, “We need to distract the kethel guarding the river, or we won’t be able to get close enough to get the poison into the channels that draw up the water.”
“We still don’t know if we’ll be able to shift once we get near the colony,” Pearl said, still sounding skeptical of the entire thing.
“We know that,” Jade said, her frills ruffled with tension. She turned to Bone.
“Exactly how close were the Arbora to the colony when they realized they couldn’t shift?”
Bone frowned, looking around at the others. “What did Blossom say? They were below the first terrace? Or closer?”
Balm stood. “I’ll go to the blind and ask her.”
Jade waved a distracted assent, and Balm headed out of the clearing.
Moon watched her go, mostly to have something to look at besides Jade. So he saw Balm glance back before she stepped into the undergrowth.
Huh, Moon thought, not sure what it was about that glance that set off a warning. As if Balm had wanted to make sure she wasn’t followed. Moon was standing back against the thick trunk of the tree, at an angle, and he didn’t think she had seen him watching her.
It seemed unlikely. But there was no point taking chances. He pushed off the tree and picked his way through the ferns after her.
He realized almost immediately that she wasn’t walking toward the blind. She moved at an angle to it, to pass it at some distance and wind her way deeper into the forest. She avoided the sentries, the hunters posted in the trees near the blind and the clearing.
Even as he followed her, Moon couldn’t believe she was doing what it looked like she was doing. She wouldn’t betray Jade, let alone the rest of the court. Not in her right mind, he thought uneasily. There had to be another explanation.
They were perhaps a hundred paces past the blind, where the spiral and plume trees grew close together, linked by vines to form an almost impenetrable canopy overhead. She shifted, half-extending her wings to leap partway up the trunk of a plume tree.
Moon shifted too, sprinting through the undergrowth to catch up with her. He reached the base of the trunk and looked up to see her climbing rapidly; she was trying to get past the canopy to take flight. He still couldn’t believe it.
“Balm,” he called. “Where are you going?”
Her claws slipped on the wood as she twisted around. She stared down at him and her face was empty of expression, as if she hadn’t heard him, couldn’t see him.
Moon froze for one startled heartbeat. All right, now I believe it. He scrambled up the trunk after her. She climbed frantically, showering him with fragments of bark. She fought her way past the heavy branches, then jumped, flapping to get height. Right behind her, Moon planted both feet on the trunk and shoved off.
She rose over the trees with strong wing beats but Moon was stronger. He slammed into her from behind and caught her around the waist. She shrieked in rage, clawing at his arms, but he snapped his wings in and twisted to the side, using his weight to pull her off balance.
She flailed. A buffet from her wing caught him a stunning blow to the head, and they tumbled toward the ground.
They crashed through the leafy branches, and Moon made a desperate grab, catching hold of one. The branch bent under their weight, swinging them into the bole with a brutal thump, but it didn’t break. Balm abruptly stopped fighting and pulled her wings in, survival instinct overriding everything else.
Moon kept hold of her, not sure if the fall had shocked her back to her senses enough for her to save herself. He looked down and saw flashes of color through the undergrowth and the lower branches as all the Aeriat and most of the hunters crashed through the forest toward them. Wonderful, Moon thought sourly. This explanation wasn’t going to be easy. He picked out a mostly clear area of mossy ground, and dropped.
He extended his wings just enough to control their fall. They landed hard but intact. He let go of Balm and she stumbled away a step, then sat down on the moss, making no attempt to get away. The Aeriat and hunters arrived in a rush, surrounding them, most of them growling, others just baffled. Jade landed in front of Moon, her mane flared, and flung her arms up. “Quiet!” The others went silent. “Moon, what—”
“The Fell did something to her.” Moon said it rapidly, staying focused on Jade, trying to get the words out before somebody jumped him. “She was going to them.”
Balm looked up, shaking her frills back, staring at him incredulously. “How could you—I was not!”
“They must know we’re back, the same way they knew we left,” Moon insisted. “Now they’re calling her to them to find out why.”
The others muttered to each other again. Flower and Chime, at least, watched Balm worriedly. Pearl’s expression was completely opaque. River stood beside her, looking confused but vindicated. Struggling to her feet, Balm shouted, “I was not going to the Fell!”
The hard part was that Moon didn’t think she had any idea that she was lying. She looked more hurt and angry than anything else.
He said, “Then why didn’t you go to the blind like you said? Why didn’t you answer me?”
“Quiet, both of you.” Jade’s growl silenced the whole group again. She stepped forward, catching Moon’s wrist. He flinched, almost pulling away, but she was looking at the claw marks on his arms. Balm had torn into him hard enough to pierce the tough skin between his scales, leaving long scratches deep enough to sting. Jade looked at Balm, at her golden scales, unmarked.
Balm stared down at her claws as if she had no idea how Moon’s blood had gotten there. Jade asked quietly, “Where were you going, Balm?”
“I was—” Balm took a sharp breath, as if she couldn’t finish the sentence and didn’t know why. Her anger gave way to confusion and she shook her head. “I was just going to scout.”
“You don’t know where you were going,” Moon said, driving the point home. If she would admit it, maybe it would help break whatever hold the Fell had on her.
“I was going to scout!” Balm snarled.
Jade watched Balm carefully. “You said you were going to the blind to speak to Blossom. And I told all the Aeriat to stay on the ground until we left for the attack.”
Balm spread her hands, helpless and frustrated. “I know that, but I wasn’t going far.”
As an explanation, it wasn’t much, and Moon saw the doubt in Jade’s eyes. He said, “It’s not her fault. She doesn’t know they’ve done this to her.”
Pearl turned to Flower, sounding thoughtful. “Is that possible? That she could be under the Fell’s power without knowing it?”
“They do it to groundlings,” Moon said in exasperation. “It doesn’t look like this; it’s much easier to tell. The groundlings do whate
ver the Fell want, and they don’t know why.”
Jade snapped, “Moon, quiet.”
Moon shut up, unwillingly. At least they seemed willing to believe him.
“It’s possible,” Flower said, her eyes narrowed in speculation. “Balm has no reason to betray us.”
“Of course I don’t!” Balm looked ready to weep.
“Anymore than Branch did,” Flower finished quietly.
Everyone was silent, watching Balm uneasily. Then River said with bitter satisfaction, “I told you it wasn’t Branch.”
The last place Moon wanted to be was on River’s side, but he was right. All the evidence against Branch could also be leveled at Balm. She had the same opportunities to slip away from the colony as Branch had. She had known they were going to the Golden Isles, known about the meeting at the Blue Stone Temple, known that flying boats had come back with them, but not how many. And she had known that Moon and Jade had flown toward the east, but hadn’t known they had gone for the poison until last night.
Flower folded her arms, still speculative. “Balm, will you let me see through your eyes?”
What? Moon thought, startled, but everyone else seemed to know what she meant. Balm looked around at them all. “Yes, I’ve nothing to hide.”
Flower nodded. “We’ll do it now. Come back to the blind.”
“I’m sorry,” Moon said to Jade, though he knew there was no help for it. It would have been better not to expose what had happened to Balm in front of the whole group—Moon knew that better than anybody—but that hadn’t been possible.
Jade shook her head, took Balm’s wrist and led her away after Flower and Pearl.
Moon followed with the others. The hunters spread out, but the Aeriat still pointedly surrounded him. He couldn’t keep his spines from flaring in response. It was mildly gratifying when they backed off a little, even River and Drift.