He climbed out of the pool, dripping on the grainy floor. The dunking had washed away most of the dried remnants of the metal-mud. He moved cautiously forward, his skin prickling uneasily, trying to see further into the shadows. He knew he wasn’t alone in here.
He went to the shaft first, craning his neck to peer down. It plunged straight through the hive. Dim daylight was visible down at the bottom. That would have been a help, if he had claws to climb or wings to fly.
He looked around again. By this time his eyes had adjusted and he realized the shadow in the inner wall was a large, Dwei-sized opening into another chamber or passage.
He started toward it, noticing that Dwei shells hung on the walls, polished to gleaming green-blue iridescence and etched with markings in a strange language. They appeared to commemorate something, ancestor worship or funerary tributes. Some had been knocked to the floor and broken, the pieces scattered. Other things were strewn around, things that looked like they had been looted from a groundling city. Moon picked his away around torn and stained fragments of rich cloth and fur, a broken ivory cup, all of it dropped like trash. These Fell lived like the others Moon had seen, making nothing of their own, stealing even their clothes from groundlings.
Moon reached the opening and pushed aside the drifting fragments of a torn membrane curtain.
Beyond it was another chamber. In the shadows against the far wall, something large and alive lay in a nest of torn cloth, fragments of Dwei shell scattered around it. He could see a sloping, scaled flank, the folded edge of a leathery wing, a gleam of fangs. It was breathing, but so slowly it was nearly silent. Moon’s throat was already too dry to swallow, his body already cold from fear, and he had been half-expecting this. It was a Fell progenitor, the only female Fell, the ones who mated with the rulers to produce all the rest. He had never seen one before, only heard of their existence, but this had to be one.
He stepped back, away from the curtain, feeling the cold settle into his bones. Jade is not going to be here in time. If she was even on her way, if the court hadn’t just cut its losses and given up on him and the stolen Arbora. He couldn’t let the Fell have what they wanted.
Moon backed away another few steps, trying to think. Find a weapon and kill the progenitor. Or make the progenitor kill you. He had to admit the second option was more likely.
He looked around at the debris on the floor, hoping for something with a sharp edge. He saw a tumbled pile of dark cloth behind the nearest platform. A few steps took him close enough to see clearly. He stopped, startled.
It was a dead ruler. He was in his groundling form, pale hair fanned out behind his head, open eyes staring sightlessly up. A trail of blood leaked from his mouth, staining the waxy white skin of his cheek. His dark clothes were disarrayed, pulled open across his chest, a chain of rubies broken and scattered near his hand, but there was no visible wound. Moon took a wary step forward, taking in a breath to taste the air again. It wasn’t a trick. The ruler was really dead, and had been here long enough for his blood to cool.
Behind him, a voice said, “I killed him when he arrived with the kethel.”
Moon twitched around, his breath caught in his throat.
She was standing in front of the shaft, as if she had just climbed up out of it. She could have passed for a groundling, or the groundling form of an Aeriat. She was tall and slim, with gold-tinted skin and blue eyes, her hair straight and dark, falling past her waist. She was dressed like a Raksura too, in a watered gold silk wrap, leaving her arms bare. Then a dakti crept around her, peering up at Moon with wide-eyed curiosity. A dakti without wings, with the heavy build of an Arbora. A mentor-dakti, Moon thought. He had known there had to be at least one more here. And there were no female rulers. She’s another crossbreed, a warrior-ruler.
Her gaze on the dead ruler, she said, “He failed me, and I was angry. To bring me only six Arbora, no queen, no consort. By the time I discovered that you had followed him, it was too late.” Her voice sounded like a groundling woman’s, light and warm.
She took a step toward Moon, and that was when he caught her scent. He flinched backward, nearly overpowered by the flight-urge to turn and throw himself out the window into the hive well. He conquered it with a shiver, still feeling it trickle through his veins like icy water. Her scent was foul, strange, wrong. Even the mentor-dakti just smelled like a Fell.
She said, “I won’t hurt you.” She tilted her head, her lips forming a smile. There was something disjointed about her face, something awry about how she wore the expression. “You saw the Arbora are well.”
The Arbora. It was a reminder that Moon didn’t just have himself to worry about. He felt certain he already knew, but he made himself say, “You’ve still got plenty of Dwei to eat. What do you want with us?”
“We need company. There’s nothing like us anywhere in the Three Worlds.” She touched the mentor-dakti’s head. It leaned against her leg, nuzzling her. “Especially since you killed Erasus, back at your colony. But perhaps it was appropriate that he died there, after he spent so many turns watching it for us. I wanted him to stay here in safety, but he was desperate to see it with his own eyes, instead of only in his scrying. Demus here is not so accomplished, yet.” She gently pushed the mentor-dakti away. Demus hissed in mild rebuke, then turned and crept away. It was smaller than the other one, and its right leg was twisted at an odd angle. She watched it retreat, then looked back at Moon. “You didn’t ask my name. It’s Ranea. I know yours.” She lifted her hand, and her nails were almost as long as claws. “Come here, Moon.”
He fell back another step. “Let the Arbora go, and I’ll do what you want.” He didn’t think she would go for it, but it was worth a try.
“Why should I? I need them.” The smile was still on her face, but it was almost as if she had forgotten it was there. He realized then what was wrong with her expression: it was like an imitation of things she had seen others do, without any real understanding of what it meant. In the same warm tone, Ranea said, “And you don’t have anything I want that I can’t just take.”
Moon backed away from her. He told himself it didn’t matter what she did to him. If she was part Raksuran warrior, then she was infertile; it was the progenitor in the other room he had to worry about. “Your ruler told the court you wanted to join with us.”
“That’s true.” She paced forward. There was something predatory in the ease and focus of her movement, making her look even less like a groundling. “Our flight once ruled the east, all of the great peninsula. So the rulers said.”
Moon backed into the platform and flinched when its brittle edge bumped him in the lower back. She stopped a few paces away, watching him, and her foul scent made the back of his throat itch.
“They told me how the groundling empires died on our whim, and prey was plentiful. But they say we fought among ourselves, broke into smaller flights, became too isolated, too inbred. Progenitors died too soon. Fewer rulers were born, but more sterile dakti and kethel. So my progenitor and her rulers made an experiment, capturing a Raksuran consort and forcibly mating with him.”
Ranea paused to taste the air. Moon knew his scent must have changed. He had felt the sweat break out on his skin. She took her time, obviously relishing his fear, then continued easily, “He died soon after. She tried again, mating her first crossbreed progeny to her rulers, to captured Arbora. Eventually, this produced Erasus, then later, Demus, and I.” Her voice sharpened. “Janeas, come here, I know you’re watching.”
After a moment of silence, Janeas jumped out of the upper passage, glided over the pool, and landed near the shaft. Demus chirped at him, a greeting that Janeas ignored. Ranea stared at him, still with that fixed smile.
After a long moment, Janeas said, stiffly, “I have done everything you asked.” He didn’t look at the dead ruler sprawled near the platform.
The words lingered in the damp air. Then Ranea turned back to Moon, as if Janeas hadn’t spoken.
“When
you came to Liheas in the groundling city,” she said, “he wanted to bring you to me. He thought you were perfect. A consort who knew nothing of the Raksura, who could be molded as we wished, who could be taught to do our bidding. But it was all a trick, and you killed him.”
She probably expected him to argue with her, something that would be about as pointless as arguing with the dead ruler. Moon just said, “I was lucky.”
“Do you want to know why we chose Indigo Cloud?” She moved closer, within arm’s reach. “We came for you.”
Don’t fall for this trick again, he told himself. He said, “That’s a lie. I traveled across the east, if you knew where I was you could have caught me anytime.”
“I wasn’t ready to clutch yet,” Ranea said it as if it was self-evident. “Erasus’ augury said you would eventually be at Indigo Cloud, that then the time would be right.”
Clutch? Moon flicked a look at the doorway to the other chamber. “I don’t understand.”
She followed his gaze. “That was—is—my progenitor. My mother. She’s old now, and dying.” She took in his expression, and this time her smile was real, a ruler’s smile, a Fell’s smile, cold and predatory and satisfied. “Did you think I was only a Fell-born warrior? I’m a progenitor. A Fell-born queen.”
Moon couldn’t answer, his throat locked with sick horror. You should have jumped out the window when you had the chance.
She stepped closer, a hand under his chin lifting his head. “All I have to do is breed more queens like myself, more dakti like Demus, and nothing can stop us. We can take control of every other Fell flight we touch, have all the prey we want. We can rule the Three Worlds, earth, air, and water.” Her hand moved down, resting against his throat, almost absently, part caress and part menace, like a butcher petting a herdbeast to calm it. She said, “It’s known that the Fell and the Aeriat came from the same source. The only difference is that the Aeriat joined with another race of shifters called Arbora.” She cocked her head. “You didn’t know they were two different races? Arbora build, they shape, they craft. They make images, art. All the Aeriat do is fight and eat. Two related races that combined to make something better. Why shouldn’t this happen again?”
Panic abruptly overcame numb shock, and Moon knew he had to make her kill him. He couldn’t let her take him, birth another clutch of half-Raksuran monsters to attack other courts, to destroy even more groundling cities, to move across the Three Worlds like a plague. They wouldn’t stop. They didn’t know how. All they knew was breeding and eating, and they would do it until they killed every living creature intheir reach.“Because you’re Fell.You’reabominations,andyou destroy everything you touch.” A shadow flickered in her eyes, and he knew the strike was true.“In Saraseil,Liheas touched me,and it ruined everything.It just took turns and turns for me to know it.”
She hit him, an open-handed slap that knocked him off his feet. Half-stunned, he tried to roll away from her, but she grabbed him by the hair. Moon clawed at her arm, kicked, trying to wrench away even if he lost most of his scalp, but she pulled him up onto his knees.
A dakti careened in, bounced off the ceiling, and landed near Janeas. It spat out words in the Fell language, hissing and clicking madly.
Ranea dropped Moon and turned to the dakti. Moon scrambled away, watching her warily. He saw Janeas move away as she stepped past him, as if the ruler wasn’t eager to get within arm’s reach of her either. Ranea grabbed the messenger dakti by the head, lifting it off the ground and shaking it, giving it a sharp order. It repeated the words, gasping this time, probably from the pressure of her hand on its skull. She dropped the dakti and strode to the nearest window.
Moon staggered to his feet and followed her at a careful distance. He wasn’t sure what he was going to see, but he was hoping for an unexpectedly large number of Raksura. He caught the edge of the window and looked down.
The two kethel who had been lying on the hive floor were gone. No, not gone. He squinted, peering down. They were in groundling form, two big muscular bodies, sprawled unconscious near the shaft down into the ruin. Other smaller bodies were scattered around them. Dakti, the dakti that ate the kethel’s scraps, Moon thought in relief. The Dwei had really done it! They had given the poison to five of their number, then sent them to be eaten by the kethel.
He looked up to see Ranea staring at him, her eyes brilliant with rage. She said, “You did this.”
“No. I was here.” In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have smiled when he said it.
He saw her hand lift and tried to duck away, but the blow caught his shoulder, knocking him sprawling. Tasting blood from a bitten lip, he rolled over to see her standing over him. You got your wish. She’s going to kill you.
Behind him, Janeas said, “He must have brought some of that groundling filth here.”
Ranea turned the furious glare on Janeas. “When you found him you should have searched him, searched the Dwei.”
“I didn’t find him; that was Venras,” Janeas said, sounding bitterly pleased. “Demus saw through his eyes. Demus should have told him to search. You’ve put him above us all. Such things should be his decision.”
She stood there a moment, fists clenched, shivering with rage, as if unable to decide who she wanted to kill more, Moon or Janeas. Then leaned down to grab Moon’s arm and dragged him upright. She tossed him at Janeas.
“Watch him.”
She stepped away from them and shifted. Dark mist swirled around her for a heartbeat, forming into a shape that was something out of a nightmare. Her scales were the matte black of Fell, without the colors or undersheen of Raksura, and the texture was coarse. Her wings had the leathery hide of the dakti, and her head was crowned with both an armored crest and Raksuran spines. And she was big, half again as tall as Moon’s shifted form.
She stepped forward and leapt out through the window, her wings snapping out as she dropped from view. The messenger dakti struggled up and jumped after her. Janeas stared after them, gripping Moon’s arm until the bones ground together.
Think of something, Moon told himself. Ranea had killed a ruler for no reason, for trying to salvage their sick plan and bring her at least some of the Arbora she wanted. Janeas had to see that his own chances of survival rested on her whim. Moon said, “You can’t think this is a good idea.”
Janeas said nothing, but he didn’t hit Moon, either.
Moon persisted,“All the Fell at Indigo Cloud are dead.You don’t have enough here to fight us off, and the Aeriat know not to get near that thing now.”
The mentor-dakti chittered warningly, and Janeas snarled at it.
Moon considered that response, the fact that he had given a ruler a chance to gloat over him and the ruler hadn’t taken it. He had always thought rulers only cared about themselves, that the survival of the Fell as a race wouldn’t bother them as much as a threat to their own scales. Except apparently that wasn’t the case at all. There weren’t that many rulers in Fell flights, and what was that like, to live surrounded by dakti and kethel who differed from trained animals only by their active malice? Maybe rulers... cared about each other. Kathras cared about Liheas, or at least cared that I killed him.
Moon wet dry lips and said, “Kathras was dying when he found us.”
Janeas made a sound, an exhalation of breath that wasn’t a hiss. Moon said, “He could barely stay in the air. She made him fly himself to death to catch up with us, through mountain currents, ice storms. There were two of us. We could stop. One could rest while the other hunted.”
Janeas flung him down, and Moon struck the rubbery floor face-first. Standing over him, Janeas snarled, “You killed him. I saw it.”
Moon pushed himself up enough to look at him. His nose was bloody and it was hard to breathe.
“It was easy, because he was already dying.” He pointed back to the dead ruler that lay rotting in the cool air. “Just like she killed him—” Janeas took a step forward and Moon shoved himself back. “—for no reason. Be
cause he tried to obey her orders. He tried to salvage her stupid plan.”
Janeas lunged forward. Moon rolled, pushed to his feet, and backed away.
“You think there’s any place for you, for the other rulers, once she does this? She needs dakti and kethel for slaves, not—”
Something flashed past the window, and Moon flinched back, thinking it was Ranea returning. But whatever it was had fallen straight down past this level. Then he heard a crash from somewhere below.
Janeas froze, head cocked toward the sound. An instant later, something else fell past the window, and this time Moon saw it: a big clay jar, one of the storage jars he had seen in the ruin.
Janeas strode to the window and Moon stumbled after him.
The jars had struck the floor of the hive and somehow burst into flame. Black smoke streamed up as fire spread across the floor.
Dry metal-mud, packed into the jars, and set on fire, Moon realized, and the surge of hope was almost painful. That has to be Chime’s idea. They would be dropping it on the outside of the hive, too, with any luck.
Another ruler flew toward them from the far side of the hive, banking in to perch in the window. It was Venras, the young ruler who had found Moon with the Dwei. He spoke to Janeas in the Fell language, and though Moon couldn’t understand the words, the panic was obvious.
Moon stepped back from the window, looking at Janeas. “They’re going to burn you out, kill anything that tries to escape—”
Janeas whipped around and grabbed him by the throat. His claws pricking Moon’s skin, he said, “We have their Arbora, and you. They won’t burn this place while you’re here.”
Moon couldn’t help grabbing Janeas’ wrist, but he forced himself to stand still, not to try to curl his body up to use the disemboweling claws he didn’t have.
“There are plenty of Arbora left alive in the colony. They don’t need these.” It didn’t matter if it was true or not, he just had to make Janeas believe it. “And they don’t want me—”