The Siren Depths

  She took a deep breath, and rubbed her face. “Yes. You can see it when I shift. So...I don’t shift unless I have to.” She looked up at Stone, bleak and resigned. “You could tell? Is that why you tasted the simple I made for Moon?”

  “I tasted the simple because I don’t trust any of you people,” Stone told her. “I could tell something Fell was or had been in this room, but I hadn’t narrowed it down to you yet.”

  “And what are you going to do?” Malachite asked Stone.

  “I’m taking him and leaving.” Stone took Moon by the shoulders and set him aside, then pushed to his feet. He was a head shorter than Malachite, but he suddenly seemed to be taking up far more space in the room. “We took a consort of your bloodline without permission; you’re hiding Fell crossbreeds in your court. I’d say we’re even.”

  Malachite’s tail twitched. “You may leave whenever you like. He is staying.”

  Stone cocked his head, eyes narrowed.

  Celadon stood. “But I’ve just met him! All this time, we thought he was dead; you can’t just take him away again, not so soon. Most of the Arbora and warriors haven’t even seen him yet.”

  Moon thought that appeal might be more effective on Stone than any threat Malachite could come up with. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked, looking from Celadon to Malachite.

  Celadon said, “Because you belong to us.” She glared at Stone. “They had no right to take you.”

  Stone was unmoved. “Your bloodline gave up its claim on him turns ago.”

  Malachite said, “I never gave up my claim.” For the first time, she met Moon’s eyes. Moon’s breath caught in his throat. It was a reigning queen’s power to touch some inner part of you, to draw it out and connect it to the rest of the court. It was part of how queens could keep other Raksura from shifting. Moon felt like Malachite had just pulled his heart right out of his body.

  As if oblivious to what she had just done to him, Malachite said, “And it’s fitting that he be here now.”

  Moon wrenched his gaze away and stared at the floor, trying to fight that pull.

  It was Stone who said, “Why now?”

  Malachite paced away. “When we reached the safety of this colony again, our mentors spent turns trying to understand what had happened to us, why the Fell had tried to make crossbreeds. They searched our histories, went to other courts to search their libraries, always careful never to speak of what had happened to us, but they never found any sign that the Fell had done anything like this before. They scryed for answers, but discovered nothing.” Malachite lifted her head. “But within the past turn, the scrying told us that another Fell flight was coming here, and that that flight would hold the answer.”

  “Here?” Moon said, appalled. “To the Reaches?” It can’t be happening again.

  Stone hissed in disbelief. “Fell haven’t come here for two hundred turns. They remember what happened the last time.”

  “The Reaches were overpopulated then,” Malachite said. “Perhaps they wish to test us again.”

  Lithe cleared her throat, and said hesitantly, “I can feel the flight out there, getting closer. It came down from the southwest.”

  “You can hear the Fell?” Moon asked Lithe. He wondered what other abilities she had. The crossbreed mentor-dakti from the Fell flight who had attacked Indigo Cloud had had unusual powers of divination, much stronger than a normal mentor.

  “No.” She shuddered. “But I know where they are. I’ve always known.” From her expression, it was more burden than asset. “The others—the other crossbreeds—don’t sense them like I do.”

  Stone folded his arms. He still looked like he thought he was talking to crazy people, but he was intrigued, too. “So what are you planning to do about this?”

  Celadon told him, “There’s a groundling city a day of warrior’s flight away from here. We think the Fell will attack there first.” She turned to Moon. “That’s where I was when you arrived. I’ve been trying to persuade them of the danger.”

  Moon stared. “Persuade them of the danger? What does that mean? Did you tell them Fell were coming?”

  Celadon hissed. “Of course I did. But they’ve never heard of Fell before. They don’t believe me.”

  “They don’t believe you? So you just left, let a whole city full of groundlings with the Fell about to feed on them and no idea—” He took a step forward and a wave of dizziness hit. He swayed, and Stone caught his arm to steady him.

  Malachite said, “That’s enough.”

  Moon and Stone ended up back in Moon’s bower in the empty consorts’ hall.

  It was past sunset and the window into the hall was dark, the bower lit only by the spelled stones set into the carving. The Arbora had brought food and then scattered because Stone was intimidating, especially when he was irritated, and Moon’s mood wasn’t much better. Stone had made Moon eat before he let him talk anymore, and Moon had choked down the plates of raw meat without tasting any of it. Fell crossbreeds raised as Raksura, auguries, it was all too much to make sense of in one night. And the worse part, that the Fell were heading toward a completely unprepared groundling city. That thought brought vivid images of Saraseil to mind, the dakti hunting helpless groundlings through the streets, the kethel tunneling through the walls of stone buildings after the inhabitants who had tried to take shelter there. The fire, the gutted bodies. Fell attacks on cities were worse than on camps or small settlements. The groundlings were so often trapped in their own homes, with their defenses against other predators or groundling tribes useless against the Fell.

  “There, I ate it,” he said finally, shoving the last empty plate away. The meat sat in his stomach like a rock. “Are you happy?”

  “Do I look happy?” Stone paced on the far side of the bowl hearth. “I turn my back for two heartbeats and the court falls apart. All that trouble to get us back to our home colony and then this happens, you miserable, ungrateful children. I should never have bred in the first place.”

  This had been a recurring theme since leaving Malachite and the others in the queens’ hall. Moon was right: Stone’s view of Opal Night’s request for Moon’s return was radically different than anyone else’s. Stone seemed to think that Indigo Cloud had had the option of simply refusing and had only given in out of some desire to personally irritate him. Moon had earlier pointed out that he had suggested simply refusing and the others had said it was impossible, but by this point he had given up trying to argue rationally. He just said, “I’m not related to you.”

  “And I should have known your whole bloodline would be crazy.” Stone stopped and glared down at Moon. “Did any other queen touch you?”

  “Sort of.” At Stone’s expression, he explained, “Tempest hit me in the face. But I threw a kettle at her and made a joke about her dead sister, so I was asking for it.”

  “That’s all right.” Stone resumed pacing. “But don’t tell Jade. We’ve got enough to worry about.”

  “She’s really coming?”

  “Of course she’s coming—” Stone stopped pacing again, frowning. “You didn’t think she was.”

  Moon looked down at the hearth. His throat went tight. “We had to stop when one of the warriors was hurt, and we were three days late. Jade said she’d start the day after we left, and when she wasn’t here when we arrived...” He was still having trouble believing this was really happening. He had been trying to make himself accept the fact that he had been discarded again, that he would never see anyone from Indigo Cloud, and then Stone had walked in and the world had changed. Not very different from how the world had changed when Stone had first found him with the Cordans in the eastern jungle.

  Stone sat on his heels so they were closer to eye level. “Why did you think she wasn’t coming?”

  “I told you, she wasn’t here.” That didn’t really answer Stone’s question, but then Moon couldn’t answer it. Not in any way that made sense to anyone other than him. “And she had Ember.”

  S
tone looked honestly baffled. “Who?”

  “The consort Emerald Twilight gave her to replace me!”

  “Oh, the kid.” Stone dismissed Ember with a wave of his hand. “He’s your problem. I’ve raised enough kids, I’m not doing another one.”

  Moon sat there a moment, too floored to respond. He shook his head impatiently, trying to get his scattered thoughts together. “You said there was an accident but no one was hurt. What happened? Was it another platform collapse?”

  Stone’s sharp gaze didn’t waver, for long enough that Moon started to feel like prey and had to fight the urge to growl. Then Stone finally relented and said, “No, it was a hunting accident.”

  Relief made Moon break out into a sweat, then he realized what Stone had said. “A hunting accident?”

  “Two young hunters went exploring on one of the platforms a couple of trees away and walked right into a hibernating predator.” Stone absently scratched the back of his neck. “We used to call them ‘snatchers.’ They look like snakes, but with long arms. Not much scent, and don’t make a lot of noise when they move. This one wasn’t moving until the idiots woke it up. Fortunately the warrior patrol heard them and held it off until Jade got there.” He added, as if it was an unimportant detail, “Bone said it was a good forty paces long.”

  “Forty paces? But what—” Moon had the feeling Stone was leaving something out. “Why did that keep her from leaving? Did she think there were more?”

  “She killed it, but she broke her right arm and cut up her shoulder.”

  Moon shoved to his feet. “You said no one was hurt!”

  “I didn’t want to tell you in front of them.” Stone jerked his head toward the doorway. “I preferred your crazy bloodline thinking I had a queen on her way to back me up.”

  It was Moon’s turn to pace, to fight the nervous urge to bust out of here and head back to Indigo Cloud immediately. “I should have been there.”

  “That was actually my point,” Stone said, his voice dry.

  Moon ignored that. “She can’t fly? For how long?”

  “Getting the break knocked her out and she went into her Arbora form. Heart was afraid if she shifted before she healed, it would translate to wing damage. From the time we got back to the colony...” Stone looked thoughtful. “She should be almost healed up by now. If I can get your damn birthqueen to let us leave in the morning, we can probably meet her on the way, before she gets too far.”

  Moon stopped, staring at one of the wall carvings without seeing it. Leave in the morning, go back to Indigo Cloud, go home. If someone had said that to him yesterday, if he had thought there was any real chance of it, he would have sprung at it like a starving predator at fresh meat.

  And Jade hadn’t lied about coming after him. None of this changed the fact that Moon hadn’t produced a clutch yet, but maybe with Ember there now, Moon’s shortcoming in that area didn’t matter as much. Whatever it was, the smart thing to do was to get back to Indigo Cloud as soon as possible, and work on becoming so entrenched there that getting rid of him would be far more difficult.

  But he couldn’t. He said, “I can’t go back. Not yet.”

  Stone said, ominously, “What?”

  Moon faced him. “There’s a Fell flight heading for a groundling city. A groundling city so unprepared they won’t even know to run away until it’s too late. And it’s only a day’s flight from the outskirts of the Reaches. We just can’t ignore it.” He couldn’t believe Stone didn’t see that.

  Stone growled under his breath. “I know, I know. I just don’t want Indigo Cloud involved with it.”

  So Stone did see it. “What, were you going to take me to Jade and then turn around and come back here?”

  “I was considering it,” he admitted. “If one Fell flight succeeds here, the others will follow. We’ll have to deal with them sooner or later.”

  He was right, and the thought made Moon’s insides cold. “So we should stay and help.”

  Stone pushed to his feet and stepped close, and made his words an emphatic order. “I want you out of this, and I don’t want Jade anywhere near it.”

  “Why? We’ve both killed rulers. And Jade—”

  “You idiot. This flight is probably coming here because it wants to make crossbreed Raksura.” Stone hissed. “A few ruler-queens like Ranea would make it easier for the Fell to take on the Reaches again.”

  Moon turned away, sudden tension making his back teeth ache. More reason to make sure this flight was destroyed utterly. He muttered, “Stop calling me an idiot.”

  “Stop acting like one,” Stone said, but without much heat.

  Moon leaned his shoulder against the wall, making himself think with his head and not his claws. “Maybe this flight is related to the one that came after Indigo Cloud.” The flight which had destroyed the groundling city of Saraseil, who had used their cross-breed mentor-dakti to track Moon across time, to predict that he would one day go to Indigo Cloud. Maybe one of the mentor-dakti escaped and predicted I’d come here. The thought didn’t help his still queasy stomach.

  “Maybe.” Stone stepped to the hearth and took a seat on the fur mat. He grimaced as he settled into place, rubbing his lower back. “You can tell Malachite to ask one of the rulers when she’s ripping his guts out.”

  Moon went to sit down on the furs, suddenly aware of how exhausted he was; he didn’t think he would be able to stay awake much longer. Stone looked weary too, and a little more gray than usual in the spell-light. Moon asked, “Why did it take you so long to get back to Indigo Cloud? Did the Arbora want to stop a lot?” It wasn’t fun being carried for long periods of time, and Blossom and the few other Arbora who had helped Niran sail the flying ships were adventurous types. Moon had figured they would have made Stone and the other warriors land frequently so they could sightsee.

  “Not exactly. We had company on the way back.”

  “Company?” Then Moon remembered who else was an adventurous type, who had been cheated out of his trip to see a Raksuran colony by a Fell attack. And who might find a trip to see the Reaches, the fabled homeland of the Raksura, irresistible. “Delin?”

  “He gave the Arbora a ride back in another flying boat.” Stone let his breath out, sounding tired and annoyed.

  Moon wanted to see Delin again, and had just assumed that would never happen. But then he had also assumed he would never see Stone again. He was suddenly too tired, too overwhelmed to think about it a moment more. He pulled another fur around and lay down on it, saying, “We’ll decide what to do in the morning.”

  Stone made a noise that combined a snort of derision and a growl. But after a moment, he moved around and lay down next to Moon.

  Chapter Nine

  Moon had fallen asleep immediately, lulled by Stone’s reassuring presence. But deep into the night, he woke suddenly with the conviction that someone was in the passage outside the bower.

  It might be one of the Arbora checking on them, but he remembered the sense that someone had been standing outside the guest chamber last night. He sat up on one elbow, and saw Stone lying on his back, eyes open.

  Stone caught Moon’s gaze and pointed up and to the side. Moon nodded, remembering the layout of the hall. That faint sense of presence moved up through the passage to the deserted bowers, toward the area that had shown signs of recent occupation.

  Moon eased away from Stone, motioning for him to stay where he was. Stone gave him a withering look in return. Ignoring that, Moon got to his feet and moved silently to the door of the bower.

  The passage was empty, the white glow of the spell lights reflecting off the curves and angles in the carving, the old claw marks scarring the polished wood. Moon climbed quietly upward toward the other bowers. Faint movement sounded from one, and he stepped into the doorway. There was a figure beside the cold hearth, just leaning down to pick up the book that lay on a cushion.

  Moon said, “Did you forget to take it with you?”

  The figure whipped aro
und so fast it sat down hard, the book in its lap. It looked like a young warrior or consort, at least at first sight. His hair was dark and his eyes were green, and he had sharp features and a lean, rangy build. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and pants with a darker sash around his waist. The material was clingy enough to reveal a certain knobbiness at his elbows, wrists, and knees, suggesting that he had only recently matured.

  But his skin was pale, too pale, without even a hint of bronze or copper tint. When Raksura went to gray and then white with age, they lost the color in their hair as well as their skin. Only the groundling forms of Fell rulers had skin this pale when young.

  So this was the crossbreed consort. Besides the skin color, Moon could see no trace of Fell.

  He stared at Moon for a long moment, his tense body slowly relaxing as Moon made no move to attack. He cleared his throat and touched the book’s cover. “I was reading it when they said we had to move.” He hesitated. “You’re Moon. I’m Shade. We have the same father.”

  “I know.” Their consort father would have been forced to mate with a Fell progenitor to produce Shade, but there didn’t seem to be any point in mentioning that. Moon stepped into the bower and paced along the wall. The hollowed-out niches held trinkets, mostly bits of jewelry, cups for a tea set, broken wooden pens, a couple of folded books. There was also a battered cloth doll, relic of Shade’s not so long ago fledglinghood. It all seemed so ordinary, not the place Moon would ever have imagined a half-Fell consort to live.

  Atop a wicker chest was a sheet of paper, and Moon recognized the writing as Raksuran, though he couldn’t read any of it. But there were small scribbled drawings of plants, warriors in flight, and Arbora working in gardens. Drawing tools lay nearby, charcoal pieces and pens carved from reeds. He wondered if Shade had done the drawings himself. Moon had never been able to make a recognizable image on paper, even when he had tried to imitate groundlings’ work, and had never seen any of the Aeriat at Indigo Cloud do it. He had thought it was a skill reserved for Arbora. “Can you hear them?”