Moon thought about it, gauging time and distance and Stone’s superior speed. “No, not yet.” They were taking the direct route from the coast to Indigo Cloud, but Stone had planned to stop at Emerald Twilight. He should have reached it two or three days ago, and he would have stayed the night at least, both for the meal and the chance to sleep. He would have also told them about the seed and how they had gotten it back, in order to make sure Emerald Twilight knew Indigo Cloud was no longer a weak court at the verge of disaster. Jade had thought this would make for a better chance of good future relations between the two courts. “It’ll probably take him another day or so.”
“The others will be so relieved that we got the seed back.” Chime frowned. “Until he tells them about Flower.” He shook his head. “At least by the time we get there…”
Moon hesitated, but Root was still on the branch above them, occupied with poking a stick into a hole, and wasn’t listening. He said, “It’s still going to be hard. They’re all going to want to talk to you about her.”
“I know.” Chime shrugged his spines uneasily. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about her, but it’s just… hard right now. We knew she was dying for so long, and yet it still feels like it happened so quickly. I guess I was too good at putting it out of my mind, pretending she was going to be fine if she just got more rest.”
Moon nudged the carcass over, and sat back on his heels, hooking his disemboweling claws into the wood to steady himself. “Did you have a chance to talk to her about what happened inside the leviathan? How you kept getting—” He waved a hand beside his head. “Visions from it?”
“No. I wish I had.” Chime looked up at Moon, the scales on his brow furrowed with worry. “Esom kept wanting to talk about it. He seemed to think I’m going to be able to sense things like he can. I told him I wasn’t like a groundling sorcerer, and I wasn’t going to be like one, no matter what.”
“Would it be so bad if you were?”
Chime glared at him. “Yes.” He glanced back around, toward the west. “The others are coming this way.”
Moon stood and leaned over the steaming carcass to see if it was ready to move. Then Chime said, “Wait. Who’s that with—” His voice sharpened. “That’s not them.”
“What?” Moon looked, straightening up. Four warriors… no, five warriors came toward them through the trees. The colors and sizes were all wrong; these were strangers. “We’re about a day’s flight from Emerald Twilight.” He looked down at the carcass, belatedly wondering if they were trespassing. “Are we hunting in their territory?”
“Yes, but we’re just passing through. Nobody cares about that.” Chime pushed to his feet, watching the warriors approach.
There were two big males with copper-red scales, a smaller blue male, and two females, one green and one dull yellow. It was obvious they were heading this way. Maybe nobody cared about poaching back in the territory the old Indigo Cloud colony had occupied, but things might be different here in the Reaches. Moon said, “Root, come down here.”
Root dropped from the branch above to land next to Moon. “What do they want?” he asked, sounding a little nervous.
“We don’t know.” Moon wondered what the penalty for poaching was, if they would have to fight, and how many warriors he could take out on his own. Chime wasn’t the best fighter, and Root was still on the small side. Chime’s spines flicked uneasily and he whispered, “This isn’t good. I don’t know everything about being a warrior, but I don’t think they should be approaching a strange consort like this.”
Moon flicked his spines back. “If they’re from Emerald Twilight, they know who we are. We’re not strangers.”
“Still…” Chime muttered.
The warriors banked in, then split up at the last moment so that three landed on the branch above and two came down on this branch, about ten paces from Moon, Chime, and Root. There was something about them that made Moon’s spines itch. He didn’t recognize any of them from Emerald Twilight, but there had been a lot of warriors and he hadn’t been paying much attention to the ones clustered around the younger queens.
The green female had landed on their branch, and now she said, “What court are you from?”
She didn’t sound angry or aggressive, and Root and Chime both lowered their ruffled spines. Chime said, “We’re on our way back to Indigo Cloud. Are you from—”
Something hit Moon in the face, a wet membrane filled with liquid, thrown by one of the warriors above them. He staggered back a step, startled more than hurt, and snarled in surprised fury. Root growled, astonished, and crouched to leap upward. But Chime grabbed for Moon, shouting, “No, don’t breathe, don’t breathe!”
But the heavy sweet fumes of the splattered liquid filled his lungs, his head. Another membrane hit Chime in the side of the head and he jerked away. Moon stumbled sideways, darkness closing in around him rapidly, falling…
Moon drifted awake slowly, weighed down by a heavy lassitude. He felt oddly reluctant to move. He made himself turn his head, and felt leaves and branches creak and rustle beneath him, smelled the pungent scent of crushed foliage. Leaves? he thought, and remembered falling. He opened his eyes.
He was lying on a woven surface of leafy branches, more branches arching over him, latticed with big broad fern fronds. Chime lay beside him, sprawled on his back with one arm over his eyes. They were both in their groundling forms. The reason for the shelter was obvious; rain pattered gently on it. The light coming through the leaves was much darker, and it felt close to early evening. Moon rubbed his forehead, frowning. I don’t remember… anything. How they had gotten here, building the shelter, where here was.
Something stirred behind him; there was someone else in here with them. He managed to roll to his side and shove himself up on one arm.
A young warrior in groundling form sat near the mouth of the makeshift shelter. He was heavily built, with light copper skin and red-brown hair, and wore a faded gold vest and pants, and copper armbands with polished grey-white stones. Moon stared, trying unsuccessfully to recognize him.
Then the warrior smiled complacently and said, “Don’t be afraid.”
“What?” Instinctively, Moon tried to shift. But he felt the pressure, the constriction that halted the change, that meant there was a queen nearby deliberately preventing him from shifting. That doesn’t make sense… wait. Memory returned. The strange warriors. They drugged me. The liquid the warrior had thrown at him had been a simple to cause sleep. Moon snarled, lunged forward, and slammed the heel of his hand into the warrior’s face.
Moon had moved too quickly for the warrior to shift. He reeled back with a yelp and clutched his bloody nose. Moon shoved him aside, scrambled out of the shelter, and pushed to his feet.
They were on a platform high in the suspended forest, in a small camp in a clearing surrounded by fern tree saplings. The mountain-tree supporting the platform arched and twisted above them, the giant branches deflecting most of the rain, so it fell on them only as a light drizzle. There were two other shelters, just lean-tos, with warriors scattered around, all staring at Moon. He counted at least seven, all still in their winged forms. It looked like a semi-permanent camp. They had dug a small firepit in the center, and there was an embossed metal kettle on the coals. Then a queen stepped out from the shadow of one of the shelters. Moon had been half-expecting Ash, young, arrogant, foolishly persistent Ash. But it wasn’t her.
For a moment he thought it was Tempest. Her scales were the same light blue, the webbed overlay the same tint of gold. But this queen’s build was a little slighter, her features sharper. Moon tried to shift again, just on the off chance she would let him, but the pressure preventing him was still there.
She eyed the warrior with the bloody nose, who stumbled to his feet, then cocked her head speculatively at Moon. She said, “So that rumor about you being a fighter wasn’t all talk.”
Chime crawled out of the shelter, tried to stand, and s
at down hard. He focused on Moon, and said, worried and wary, “What happened?”
Moon shook his head to show he had no idea. He asked the queen, “Who are you?” She hadn’t been introduced with the other queens at Emerald Twilight; he would have remembered her. Unless that was her out on the balcony when Ash fought Jade, and not Tempest. At that distance, it would have been hard to tell them apart. “You were with Ash, at Emerald Twilight?”
She inclined her head. “I’m surprised you noticed me. I’m Halcyon.”
Halcyon. From her appearance, and her name… “You’re Tempest’s clutchmate?”
“Yes. And I’m afraid I’m the one who provoked Ash to challenge your queen. It was her own impulse to confront you in the greeting hall, but I decided to make use of the opportunity. Ash has always been easily led.” Halcyon stepped toward him, casually rippling her spines to shed the rainwater. “And she’ll be blamed, when word of your disappearance is carried to Emerald Twilight.”
Moon’s head was beginning to clear, enough to realize just how much trouble they were in. Chime said, incredulously, “You’ve been out here all this time, waiting for us?”
“No, only for the past three days, since your line-grandfather stopped at Emerald Twilight,” Halcyon tilted her head, still studying Moon. “All we had to do was search the direct routes from the coast to Indigo Cloud.” She added, “You were easy to find, but we won’t be. We’re a half a day’s travel away from where my warriors found you, not in the direction of Emerald Twilight.”
They wouldn’t have caught us, if we hadn’t stopped for the rain. Moon bet Halcyon had forced her warriors to fly through it. “Why? What do you get out of this?” He couldn’t believe that besting Indigo Cloud, small and struggling as it was, would be any kind of triumph for an Emerald Twilight queen. And he couldn’t believe that an ex-feral consort from an unknown bloodline was that big a prize.
Halcyon took another step toward him. “Ice is nearing the end of her reign, and the last thing she wants is trouble from another court. She’ll have to punish Ash, and Tempest will step forward to shield her, and be disgraced.”
Moon exchanged a look with Chime, who grimaced in dismay. Moon turned back to Halcyon. “And that will leave you as sister queen? What about all the others?”
Halcyon flicked her spines, this time in a shrug. “Ice knows I’m the only one who could replace Tempest. I’m not worried about the others.”
I’m worried about us, Moon thought. This plan wouldn’t work with a live consort or warrior around to explain that Ash wasn’t the guilty party. He wasn’t sure why they were both still alive now. Wait, we weren’t alone. He looked around and didn’t see any sign of a third prisoner. He demanded, “What did you do to Root?”
“The young warrior who was with you?” Halcyon glanced at one of her warriors, the big green-scaled woman.
The warrior snorted with contempt. “Nothing. He ran away.”
Chime hissed at her. “He wouldn’t run away, he’s too stupid. You hurt him.”
“We didn’t,” the warrior said, and her spines ruffled angrily. She repeated with emphasis, “He ran away.”
Moon didn’t believe it either. Root might be dead. But if he had run back to the others, all he could tell them was that strange warriors, possibly from Emerald Twilight, had taken Moon and Chime away. Which would suit Halcyon’s purpose completely.
Maybe she had planned to kill them, but when it came down to it, found it hard to take that final step. Especially with a consort. Maybe she just wasn’t certain if her warriors would go that far. Moon didn’t think pretending he didn’t understand that would do any good. “When are you going to kill us?”
Chime made a faint noise. Either he hadn’t realized this inevitable component to Halcyon’s plan, or he just didn’t want Moon to mention it aloud.
The warriors stirred a little uneasily, but Halcyon hissed with amusement. She stepped close, close enough for Moon to feel her breath. Every muscle tensed and the back of Moon’s neck prickled, but he didn’t step back, didn’t drop his gaze.
She said, with dry amusement, “I didn’t say I’d kill you.”
“Then what did you plan to do with me?”
“That’s up to you. You could cooperate.” Halcyon trailed the back of her claws against his cheek, sending a shivering pulse down Moon’s spine.
“What do you mean?” Moon was fairly certain he knew exactly what she meant, but he wanted to stall. It had to take extra concentration to keep Moon and Chime from shifting without affecting her own warriors. All they needed was a chance to escape. Moon thought he could outfly a queen, especially a queen who hadn’t been doing much of anything but sitting around Emerald Twilight plotting against her clutchmate. It was Chime he was worried about; with all the long distance flying they had been doing lately, Chime might have an advantage over the other warriors. But a queen could catch a warrior easily. Which was probably why they had bothered to drug Chime and bring him along, as a hostage for Moon’s good behavior.
As if in idle speculation, Halcyon said, “I could say I took you from Ash. Your queen wouldn’t want you after that. You could stay with me.”
Moon hoped she couldn’t hear how hard his heart was pounding. “I think you’re underestimating my queen.”
She laughed. “They said you knew very little of our ways. I see they were right.”
“What about your consort?” Presumably he was back at Emerald Twilight, enjoying the respite from his queen.
Her lip curled. “He does what I tell him to do.” Her hand dropped and she ran sheathed claws down Moon’s throat. “A change would be interesting.”
“No,” Moon said, reacting before his brain caught up to him. Keep stalling, he thought. Keeping himself and Chime alive was all that mattered. “It wouldn’t—”
A sound high above them made everyone look up. It was a warrior, flying down from the upper branches. Not flying, Moon realized. He was falling. One of the others leapt up to catch him, breaking his fall. But the others stared at what hurtled down after him.
A flash of vivid blue and silver-gray resolved into Jade, wings spread and spines furled, as she dropped down on them like vengeance itself.
With a startled growl, Halcyon jerked Moon around, his back to her, her claws pressed against his throat. She yelled at the warriors and they sprang into the air to attack.
Jade flared her wings to meet them. She slapped three Emerald Twilight warriors out of the air without a pause for breath, then closed with a big male and tossed him aside in a spray of blood.
Root appeared out of nowhere, leapt on a smaller warrior, and wrestled him off a branch, but Moon didn’t see any of the others. Not that Jade needed them, apparently. Moon couldn’t do anything but stare, Halcyon’s claws pricking his skin. He had seen Jade fight Fell, but never seen her take on other Raksura, not when she was really angry. The fight with Ash had been nothing; these warriors had no chance against her.
Halcyon must have realized it too. She shrieked, “Stop! I’ll rip his throat out!”
The remaining warriors broke off and veered away from Jade. Three were gone, either fallen to the forest floor or caught on the branches and platforms somewhere below them. Some of the others flapped unsteadily to nearby branches, badly wounded. Root dropped to land on the platform near Chime, who crouched uneasily.
Jade snapped her wings in and landed ten paces away from Moon and Halcyon. Flexing her bloody claws, she bared her fangs. She radiated fury like a furnace. Her scales were slick with rain but unmarked. None of the warriors had been able to land a claw on her. She took in Halcyon’s position, how she was using Moon as a shield, and sneered. “Coward.”
Halcyon snarled, her voice rising in rage. “Bitch.”
Jade hissed an unpleasant laugh. “Dead woman.”
Halcyon tossed Moon aside and leapt for her. Moon hit the wet grass with a thump and rolled, then scrambled up. Jade and Halcyon slammed into each other, tumbled across the platform, and
broke apart. Their scales were already streaked with scratches and blood. They circled each other, moving fast, then Halcyon darted in and nearly caught a slash across the face.
Moon tried to shift to his winged form and hissed with relief when the change flowed over him. Halcyon was obviously too distracted to maintain control over him. But unlike Ash, Halcyon was closer to an even match for Jade. And after that brief conversation, Moon doubted either of them were in any state to think about consequences or negotiate. He stepped over to the firepit and grabbed the kettle. It was a heavy one, with an iron bottom meant to hold warming stones. As Halcyon ducked away from a slash, Moon lunged in and slammed her in the head with it, putting all his weight behind the blow.
Halcyon jolted forward, right into a blow from Jade that rocked her head back. Between that and the kettle, she dropped like a rock.
Jade stood over her, breathing hard. She stared at Moon, incredulous, offended, and still wild-eyed. “What was that?” she demanded, her voice gravelly with rage.
“You can’t kill her,” Moon said deliberately. He dropped the kettle beside the firepit and shifted back to groundling, hoping that would calm Jade down. Halcyon’s head was cut and bleeding, some of her spines broken and crushed, but he saw her furled wings tremble, showing she was still breathing. “We have to take her back to Emerald Twilight and make her tell what she tried to do.” If Jade killed her, the warriors could lie about what had happened, claim they were attacked. Emerald Twilight might choose to believe them just to avoid the disgrace.
Jade didn’t think much of that idea. A growl thickening her voice, she said, “She won’t tell them. She’ll lie.”
“Her warriors won’t, if you threaten them. Tell them you’ll kill her unless they tell the truth.” The survivors had all fled the tree, but Jade could still catch one if she hurried.
Jade shook her spines and hissed in pure fury. Root shifted to groundling and dropped to a crouch, prudently not taking sides. But in a small voice, Chime contributed, “You can ask for a mentor as witness when you get to Emerald Twilight. That will involve the Arbora, and the other queens can’t pretend it didn’t happen. They’ll be forced to deal with her.”