They all stared back at him, blankly startled, and no one said anything. Deciding it was up to him, Moon took a breath to speak.
Almost as one, they all shifted, the sudden whoosh of displaced air enough to make him stumble backward. Leaping into the air, they were away in moments, and flew down the length of the well toward a broad balcony in the upper side of the trunk.
Moon stood there, stunned. Sick hurt settled over him like a blanket.
He looked up to see it had happened in full view of the Arbora working on the garden terraces above. Now they were all industriously hunched over, studying random plants or their baskets or the ground, whatever was handy, with an embarrassed air that clearly said they had seen everything.
He turned away, climbed slowly back up to the reservoir’s edge, and sat down on one of the stones around the rim. He wasn’t even sure why it hurt so much; it certainly wasn’t the first time he had been rejected by Raksura at first sight. It wasn’t even the first time he had been rejected at first sight in this colony. But they’re related to you, and they have to know it. They had to know the story, too, and that he had never been a solitary by choice.
He sat there a while, watching the stick insects skate across the water, when he heard someone leap up the steps at the far end of the rim.
He looked up to see a green Arbora just climbing onto the stones around the reservoir’s edge. She saw him and shifted to her groundling form. She was about Russet’s age, and like her she had dark bronze skin, but her hair was brown and curly, tied back with a beaded scarf. She was wearing a light blue dress, the sleeves rolled up and the hem knotted so it didn’t hang past her knees. She bolted toward him, her feet slapping the stone paving.
Moon stood, baffled, as she stumbled to a halt a few paces away. She said, “I just heard—They said you were with two Arbora children who were killed by Tath—Leaf and Fern?”
“Oh.” Moon felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Leaf had yellow-brown scales, Fern was dark green...”
“That’s them.” She took a sharp breath. “They were from my last clutch.”
They stared at one another a moment. Moon’s throat had gone dry. The Arbora distractedly pushed her curls back. “Who were the other two? I didn’t—”
“Bliss and Light.”
She nodded. “Their mother was Fair. She didn’t make it out of the colony. Neither did Yarrow. He was Fern and Leaf’s sire. That was our first clutch together. I don’t know about Bliss and Light’s sire, I’ll have to ask around. Not many of the soldiers and hunters made it out.” She blinked, and sat down suddenly on the paving.
Moon stood for a moment, unable to think of anything to say. All the words seemed to stick in his throat. Moving tentatively, he sat down beside her. She smelled of sweet herbs, and of fledglings and babies; she must be a teacher. He hoped she didn’t want him to go. Here was a living tie to his real family. “What’s your name?”
She rubbed her face, as if trying to push away the memories. “Sorry, I’m Feather.” She patted his knee absently. “I took care of you in the nurseries, when you were small enough to tuck under my arm.” As Moon was mentally reeling from that, she added, “They said there was a warrior with you? I didn’t recognize the name.”
“Sorrow. Her scales were dark copper. Her groundling form...She looked like me, same skin and hair. Except her eyes were brown.” He knew he wasn’t being very coherent, but it was the best he could manage.
“She must have changed her name.” Feather frowned and bit her lip in thought. “It sounds like she was from Malachite’s dominant bloodline, though. That should narrow it down a little. I’ll ask and see what the others who are my age remember. I suppose...” Her voice went thick. “She just grabbed as many children as she could?”
“Two in each arm. I was hanging on to her neck,” Moon told her. Then he went still, realizing what he had said. I don’t remember that. Except he did, the rush of air in his spines, clinging to a warm scaly body, Arbora babies too terrified to cry, and somewhere close by voices screaming in rage, agony...He squeezed his eyes shut, banishing the image. “What happened?”
“It was the Fell. Back then, they weren’t as bad in the east. There were a few small flights that we knew of, preying on isolated groundling towns or camps. They never hit big cities, like I’ve heard they’ve done now.” Feather’s gaze was on the gardens, and the Arbora moving along the plantings. “We never could figure out how they got so close.” She shrugged a little, her expression turning bitter. “None of us had ever seen or scented Fell before, so the rulers must have been able to confuse the soldiers who were guarding the ground entrances just long enough to get inside. The next thing we knew, there were dakti swarming the passages and major kethel digging in through the top.”
Moon hesitated, watching her. “You didn’t look for survivors, afterward?” He braced himself not to react to her answer, whatever it was.
He still wasn’t prepared for it when she said, “We looked, but we didn’t think there were other survivors. The queen and the warriors went after the prisoners the Fell took.”
“Prisoners?”
“They took Malachite’s consort, Dusk. Your father. Some Arbora and Arbora children.” Feather turned to him and squeezed his wrist. “Malachite thought you were with them. I thought that’s where my clutch was. The Kethel brought down one of the bluffs, and it collapsed into the colony. We didn’t know who was a prisoner and who was buried under the rubble. The only one we were sure of was Dusk, because some of us saw the Fell take him.” She made a helpless gesture. “But the hunters and some of the warriors searched the forest around the colony, looking for anyone who might be separated, hurt. They should have found you.”
Moon pulled away, shaking his head, confused down to the core. “But when I wasn’t with the prisoners, and there were others missing—”
“It took Malachite well over a turn to find them and free them,” Feather said.
Moon stared. “They were trapped with the Fell for a turn?” It was too horrifying to take in.
“I was with the Arbora survivors. There were maybe a hundred of us, and the wounded warriors, what was left of the children and fledglings. We were hidden in the forest near the colony. Malachite, the warriors who were still able to fight, and a couple of young mentors went after the Fell. Three nights later, Malachite came back alone and told us to follow the coast back to the west, back here to the mother colony, that she and the others would catch up with us when they could.”
The enormity of that was hard to imagine. “That’s a long way to walk.”
“We thought so,” Feather admitted. “But we started out. Slowly at first, with all the wounded, but we made better progress once the warriors recovered and could carry us for short distances. We got messages from Malachite along the way. She would send warriors to check on us, make sure we were still well and that she could find us when she needed to. She wouldn’t let the warriors who had healed up join her, made them stay with us. Then in the rainy season, months and months later, she came with the others. She brought all the prisoners back, except your father. He was dead, along with twelve of the warriors.” Her expression held remembered anguish. “We didn’t know how many prisoners the Fell had. We’d convinced ourselves that most of the court had survived. Seeing how few there were...” She shook herself, shaking off the memory, the beads in her hair clicking. She looked up at him, bewildered. “I don’t understand how we missed you. You were alone all that time?”
“Until this turn. Stone, the line-grandfather from Indigo Cloud, found me.”
Feather hissed, a combination of frustration and regret. “I wonder...Do you remember how long the warrior fled with you? If the Fell were chasing her—She must have gone some distance from the colony, or we would have stumbled on her.”
“I don’t remember. The Fell could have followed her because she was carrying us, because they wanted children.” After Indigo Cloud’s experience with the Fell fli
ght who had been determined to crossbreed Raksura, it was a real possibility. “What did the Fell do to the prisoners? Did they try to make them breed with the progenitor and the rulers?”
Feather sat back, eyes widening in astonishment and consternation. He thought he had shocked her, until she said, “How did you know about that?”
So that’s a ‘yes,’ Moon thought. “It almost happened to Indigo Cloud, before the colony moved to the Reaches. It was a Fell flight that had bred with Raksura before, and wanted more of us. They had a few dakti with mentor powers, and a female ruler who was part Raksuran queen.” Even as he said it, a horrible realization struck, that Ranea and the mentor-dakti might have been born from the Opal Night prisoners. “It wasn’t—That couldn’t have been the same flight that attacked—”
“What? Oh no, no.” Feather shook her head emphatically. “Malachite killed their progenitor, and—There were none of our people left with them. The warriors told me there wasn’t much left of the flight at all.”
Moon subsided, relieved. Now that he thought about it, the timing didn’t match what Ranea had told him about her flight’s multiple attempts to crossbreed Raksura. And she was part queen. She would have recognized my bloodline. She surely wouldn’t have missed the chance to gloat over it. He said, “Opal Night should already know what happened to Indigo Cloud. The word’s been spreading through Emerald Twilight to the other courts.”
“If Malachite and Onyx know, they didn’t tell us.” Feather still seemed distracted. “Not yet, anyway.”
Watching her, Moon felt like he had the end of a tangled mass of threads, and if he pulled in the right spot, the whole thing would come apart. If he just knew what the right spot was. “Does that have something to do with why Malachite had me brought here?”
“No, how could it?” Feather looked up, frowning. “Wait, Moon, didn’t you want to come?”
Moon didn’t want to go through the story again, but he had to give her an answer. “I was taken by the sister queen of Indigo Cloud. I wanted to stay.”
Feather, at least, didn’t try to argue with him. Her brow furrowed in sympathy. “I suppose they had no choice but to let you go.”
“She said she’d come after me, but she should have been here by now. I think ...” Moon stopped, realizing he had come within a hair’s breadth of confessing the fear that he was infertile. Don’t be stupid. Feather might be sympathetic, but she wouldn’t keep that information from the Opal Night royals. “I’m not counting on it.”
Feather watched him worriedly. “Why not?”
Moon shook his head, wishing he hadn’t spoken. Then he sensed motion in the air above them and looked up.
A green warrior spiraled down from the upper levels of the hall. The slow fall indicated that the approach wasn’t hostile, but Moon pushed to his feet anyway.
Feather stood as well, murmuring, “That’s Rise.”
Moon’s thought was She’s here to tell me Jade’s arrived. He cursed himself for the surge of hope even as his heart started to beat faster.
Rise pulled her wings in to land neatly a polite distance down the reservoir’s rim. She shifted to her groundling form and came toward them. She nodded to Feather, then said to Moon, “The sister queen Onyx has asked that you be present at a meal this evening, with her and her consort, and some members of the court.”
Moon looked down, trying to hide the disappointment. Stop that, he told himself. Stop thinking about it.
“Onyx?” Feather said, not seeming pleased by this at all.
“Onyx,” Rise confirmed, unbending just enough to sound disgruntled.
Onyx was from the bloodline who had stayed in the Reaches. Still a relation, but presumably a distant one. Moon said, “Will Tempest be there?”
“She left, earlier this morning.” Rise looked uncomfortable.
That’s no surprise, Moon thought. As promised, Tempest had abandoned him as soon as possible. He looked from Rise to Feather, whose expression was now mutinous. There was definitely an undercurrent here that had nothing to do with Emerald Twilight’s abrupt departure. “I take it this dinner isn’t a good thing.”
Feather hissed out a breath. “Onyx and Malachite don’t exactly agree on a number of things. You would think the court would be better for two such strong queens, but not when they’re pulling in such different directions.”
“What directions?” Moon asked.
Rise cleared her throat significantly, glaring at Feather. Feather scratched her head, wincing. “Uh...Malachite will have to tell you about that.” It was clearly her turn to be evasive. “Really. She’d have my head if she found out I’d said anything to you.”
Rise offered suddenly, “You don’t have to go. You could say you don’t feel well, that you want to stay in your bower.”
It was probably a well-meant suggestion, but this was the first time one of the royals here had actually offered to speak to Moon, and it was an opportunity to find out more about what was actually going on. “No, I’ll go.”
Feather muttered a curse. With a note of warning, Rise said, “They won’t be kind to you.”
Moon snorted. The way the other consorts had reacted to him made that plain enough. “It won’t be the first time.” Both Rise and Feather looked puzzled, and he explained, “Raksura don’t like solitaries, and they especially don’t like consorts who are solitaries.”
Rise, being a warrior and speaking for queens, understood first, and her face went hard. Feather said, bewildered, “But you weren’t a solitary. You were lost.”
“But I couldn’t prove it.” He felt obscurely guilty, watching Feather’s face fall as understanding set in.
Rise inclined her head. “I’ll come to your bower when it’s time for the dinner.” She hesitated, as if she wanted to add something, then moved away. She shifted and took to the air, and hard flaps carried her up toward the higher levels of the hall.
Feather let out her breath. “I should go too. I need to get back to the nurseries or Luster will have a fit.” She stepped close and hugged him tightly. Like all Arbora, her groundling form felt like a soft cushion over rock hard muscle. She said, “Be careful. And try not to worry. Celadon will be back soon, and Malachite...This is hard for her. Just try to be patient.”
It was good advice and well-meant, even if he couldn’t take it. Moon hugged her back, and watched her walk away down the path along the reservoir.
After Feather had gone, Moon wandered around the reservoir to give himself time to think.
The Fell could have pursued Sorrow, driving her far from the colony, well outside the range that the Arbora had searched for survivors. He wondered if she had ever tried to return, to scout the colony to look for others, or if she had been unable to leave him and the other children for that long, and afraid to take them with her. In her position, Moon might have taken the chance. But that was easy for him to say, not being a desperate, traumatized, and possibly wounded warrior, responsible for four babies and a fledgling, hiding from the Fell in a forest filled with predators.
There was no way to know, now. He didn’t even know what Sorrow had been planning to do in the future. She might have been waiting until he and the others were old enough to travel, to start her own long journey back to the west.
It was strange to have so many questions answered, when there was still so much he didn’t know.
When he went back to his bower, he found someone had left tea warming on the hearth, and brought the clothes he had left drying in the guest bathing room. They were cleaner than the ones he was wearing now, and maybe a little less shabby. On his way here, he had passed his Arbora escort, and Russet had repeated Lithe’s offer to loan him clothes, obviously with the upcoming dinner in mind. Moon had turned her down; the Arbora meant well, but he didn’t want Opal Night’s gifts. Umber had seen him, and even commented on the scarcity of his belongings, so Onyx and her coterie would know; borrowing something finer would just make him look as if he cared about their opinion.
/> He drank the tea, then used the bathing room attached to the consort’s bowers, not wanting to give anyone any scope for remarks about dirty solitaries, and changed into his slightly less shabby clothes. Sitting by the hearth and waiting for Rise, he had time to realize the excuse she had suggested for not accepting the invitation might not be stretching the truth too much. He felt light-headed and a little sick.
He didn’t think it was the long trip. He had flown for longer periods than that, pushing harder, under worse conditions. But he had also slept deeply given every chance; on this trip, the only time he had really slept enough to feel rested had been in Viridian Sea. He hadn’t eaten well, either.
Presumably being invited to dinner would at least get him some food, though he was certain he would have to pay for it in aggravation.
Chapter Eight
The chamber Rise led Moon to was even more impressive than he had been expecting. It was impossible to guess the size or shape of the cavernous place. Widely-spaced fern trees had been planted in the floor and, aided by mentors’ magic, grown up to spread their soft green canopies across the ceiling. The smooth gray trunks were like pillars, and water flowed through a shallow stream that had been carved into the floor, complete with floating plants. The seed nodules that grew just under the broad feathery leaves had been spelled to give off light, so the trees were actually making the light they needed to survive, an artistic touch that probably pleased the Arbora.
Even this chamber couldn’t be big enough to hold the entire court, but as Rise led the way through the trees, Moon thought it might be more than half empty. Arbora and older warriors were taking their places on rugs and furs scattered on the floor, and as they passed, Moon caught many surreptitious glances. He didn’t see Russet, Lithe, or Feather, or any other familiar faces of the Arbora who had been staying close to the consorts’ hall. He didn’t think that was a particularly good sign. He glanced at Rise, who was trying to keep her expression neutral and mostly just looked grim.