Everyone seemed relieved to have a decision made; even if they didn’t know what to do in the long run, at least they knew what to do now.
As the group dispersed, Moon caught Chime’s frustrated expression. He nudged him with an elbow. “Go help Flower and the others.”
Chime hesitated. “You think I should?”
“That’s more important right now.” From the way the others were talking, all the hunters and most of the warriors were going out to hunt. They didn’t need Chime, and the mentors could probably use all the help they could get.
After a moment of indecision, Chime nodded. He seemed relieved to have something to do that he felt confident about. “You’re right. I’ll go help with the books.”
As Chime left, Jade said, “I’ll go down and help them as well. I don’t know as much about the library as a mentor, but the last few turns I haven’t done much more than study.”
Moon realized he had been assuming that he was going on the hunt. “Uh, do you mind if I go hunting?”
She tilted her head, giving him a sideways look. “Would it matter if I did?”
A little stung, Moon said stiffly, “Yes.” Then he hesitated and found himself adding more honestly, “Probably.”
Jade sighed, but it was wry. She said, “Go on.”
Moon went.
The hunt turned out to be almost interesting enough to distract Moon from worrying about their immediate future. With a group of Aeriat, he scouted the suspended forest, finding that grasseaters lived on the platforms of the mountain-trees. After a consultation with Bone, they decided to focus their attention on a herd of jumping grasseaters that looked like the eastern bando-hoppers, except with dull green fur, horns, and much meaner dispositions.
The colony tree’s platforms weren’t connected to those of the surrounding trees, though the Arbora had found the remnants of wooden bridges, long since collapsed. The Aeriat flew the hunters over to a platform near the bando-hopper-like creatures, and the hunters took it from there, finding their way from tree to tree, leaping or swinging down to the lower platforms, crossing branches, or climbing the swathes of greenery to the higher levels.
In a clearing on one of the platforms, perched on a dead hopper, Moon watched the end of the hunt. They still needed to identify the big predators in the area, and the Aeriat would have a lot more scouting to do, but he could believe that this suspended forest was the place the Arbora had been meant to live. The green-tinged sunlight was bright, the place sang with birdsong, the breeze, over the blood and dead hopper, was laced with the scents of a hundred different flowers. As Bone dragged another carcass into the clearing, Moon said, “This is a good place.”
“Well.” Bone straightened up and shook blood out of his head frills. “It would have been.” He sounded resigned.
Moon didn’t think it was time for resignation yet. “We fought off a Fell flight that had crossbreed mentors,” he pointed out.
Bone sighed. “If we had something to fight, I wouldn’t worry.”
When the hunters called a halt, Moon helped transport the carcasses back to the colony. They had enough fresh meat for the whole court for a few days, and the Arbora could dry some to store. The hunters took over the skinning and butchering, and Moon flew to one of the platforms to stand under a small waterfall, rinsing his scales off. He had fond memories of the hot water baths at the old colony, heated by rocks that the mentors spelled to give off warmth. They could have much the same set-up here, once they cleaned out the moss and figured out how to get the water to flow back into the pools throughout the tree. If they were here long enough.
To dry his wings, he flew over to the platform where the flying boats were docked and landed on the Valendera’s deck. A group of Arbora worked on the ship under Niran’s direction and Blossom’s watchful eye, sanding away claw marks, patching holes, and winding new ropes. The news had already spread, and Moon found Niran unexpectedly sympathetic. “It’s similar to the loss of a ship’s sustainer,” he said, leaning on the railing. “The rock that forms flying islands is hard to obtain for those who have no means to reach it. Instead of trying to purchase it, some try to steal it.” He shook his head. “But we know where to get more, and we don’t live in our ships.”
Blossom leaned on the railing beside him, her spines and frills drooping with depression. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. We were all counting on living here.”
“Can’t you find another place to live in this forest?” Niran asked. It was something Moon had been wondering himself. “Are there other deserted colonies?”
Blossom’s expression was bleak. “There must be, but all of them would be claimed by their original courts. Just like this tree still belonged to us, even though we hadn’t been back here in generations. If we take someone else’s colony and territory, even if it’s unused, it leaves us vulnerable to challenges by other courts. We’d have to leave the Reaches completely. That’s a long trip, when we don’t know where we’re going.”
Moon had no answers. There were more than enough Arbora working and he didn’t want to just stand here and watch. He jumped over the side, flew back up to the knothole entrance, and took the winding passage into the greeting hall. Several soldiers were still there on guard, a considerably more glum group than they had been that morning. One looked up, a dark green Arbora with a heavy build, and Moon recognized him. It was Grain, one of the soldiers who had ordered Moon out of the old colony on his first day there.
If Grain remembered the incident, Moon couldn’t tell; he looked just as depressed as Blossom. He told Moon, “They’re all down in the big room below the teachers’ level, reading.”
Moon twitched his tail in acknowledgement and headed for the stairs. “Big room below the teachers’ level” actually took in a lot of territory, but he found them in the room they had been using to sort the unloaded supplies from the ships. It was round, with several passages leading away or up into the bowers, and the domed ceiling was a carving of the sky, with the sun’s rays stretching out to give way to stars, then the half-moon. Light-shells ringed the room, set just below the rim of the carving.
All the mentors and several teachers sat around on the floor, reading from loosely bound books or piles of loose parchment. Jade sat near Flower and Merit and Chime, paging through a thick book.
Moon shifted to groundling, because everybody else was, and Jade was in her Arbora form. He went to sit next to her, and she put an arm around his waist to tug him against her side. He leaned against her, and rubbed his cheek against hers. She said, “Was it a good hunt?”
“It was great,” he said absently, distracted by the book. The paper was a thick, soft parchment, the binding a silvery cord as thin as wire, the covers a soft blue reptile hide. The writing was absolutely incomprehensible. It looked like a solid block of serpentine scrawl, ornamented in places with colored inks. He hoped he was looking at some sort of decorative embellishment, until Jade turned the page and hope sank. He snuck a look at the books and papers that Flower and Chime and the others were examining. No, this was actually the writing.
He could read Altanic and Kedaic well, and pick out words in several other common groundling languages, but this was a complete mystery. He assumed this was written Raksuran, but he couldn’t even tell where one character ended and another began. He had had the vague idea that there might be a book about consorts, something that would give him some idea of how to behave, what was expected of him, or at least a better frame of reference. That was out; there probably was something like that, but it wasn’t going to be written in Altanic.
He hesitated, but asked, “Did you find anything yet?” If they asked him to help, he wasn’t sure what he was going to say. He would have to admit it eventually and ask someone to teach him, but he would rather not do it just yet. He didn’t want to give River and his cronies anymore ammunition to use against him just now, not with the court so unsettled.
“I think we finally found wh
ere we need to be looking,” Jade said, her voice dry. “That’s an improvement.”
Chime stirred, rubbing the back of his neck. “We started with the oldest records first, but those all seemed to be from the time Indigo and Cloud led the court away.”
Flower nodded, not looking up from her book. “It looks like the paper they used started to fall apart, and they had to re-copy most of the old volumes. They were in too much of a hurry to bind most of it. So we can’t go by age of the cover to tell the date. We just have to read until something indicates it.”
From what Moon could tell, she had continued to read the entire time she was speaking. Being a mentor was apparently even more complicated than it had seemed at first glance.
Merit turned a page, yawning. “At least we found out that when the court originally left, there was no mention of anything being wrong with the tree.”
“Stone already said that,” Heart pointed out.
Merit shrugged. “I know, but at least if he hadn’t been here to tell us we would have found it out anyway.”
Heart frowned at him. “Could you make less sense? I almost understood that.”
“Argue later, read now,” Flower said, a growl in her voice.
Moon waited until they were all deeply engrossed in the books again, then slipped away.
He stopped at the nurseries to visit the kids, trying to forget the court’s troubles while the Sky Copper royals played mock-fight with some of the young fledgling warriors, and the baby Arbora climbed on him.
Spring came to sit next to Moon, and said, without preamble, “Copper says we can’t stay here.” She was a gawky, half-sized warrior; she and her clutchmate Snow were the oldest warrior fledglings, the only survivors of the old sister-queen Amber’s last clutch.
Moon eyed her over the head of the Arbora toddler who had clamped herself to his chest. It was either Pebble or Speckle, he couldn’t tell them apart yet; even their scent was identical. “Who’s Copper?”
Snow, who was shy, edged up behind Spring and supplied, “He thinks he’s smart, because Flower says he’ll be a mentor when he grows up.”
Moon ruffled Pebble or Speckle’s head frills, trying to think how much to say. The little queen Frost had switched sides at some point in the mock-battle and had pinned Thorn to the floor; she stopped to listen, and so did the rest of the combatants. Bitter, perched on Frost’s back, watched Moon with wide eyes. Three teachers, busy feeding baby Arbora, also looked over this way, worried and curious.
Moon let out his breath, resigned to being the bearer of this news. “We don’t know yet. But we might.”
He was braced to have to explain the theft of the seed, and just hoped he could do it in a way that wouldn’t make them all feel that the tree might be invaded at any moment. But Frost just said, “On the flying boats?”
Moon admitted this would probably be the case. Then Thorn flung the distracted Frost off him, Bitter pounced, and the game resumed.
Snow bounded off to join the other fledglings, but Spring said, “They don’t understand.”
Moon thought Frost, Bitter, and Thorn probably did understand, but compared to what they had been through, moving again just wasn’t a daunting prospect. The others were still unsettled by the Fell attack, and most seemed to be just pretending it hadn’t happened. Spring was old enough to realize all the implications of their situation, and maybe starting to feel the weight of the responsibility she would have soon, as a female warrior from a queen’s clutch. He tried, “We survived the Fell, we’ll survive this.”
It worked better on Spring than it had on Bone. She sat up a little straighter and said, “We will.”
Later Moon went back to the teachers’ hall, but found that in a frenzy of organization, the Arbora had moved everyone into newly-cleaned bowers. He found the one Jade had been moved into, a good-sized room on the far side of the nurseries, with a balcony looking out onto the stairwell and an intricately carved ceiling. Furs and cushions had been arranged on the floor for seating areas, there were warming stones in the hearth basin, and the blankets were piled into the big hanging bed. Moon found his fur blanket on top and took that as a good sign that he was living here too. He slung himself up into the bed for a nap.
Jade woke him sometime later, climbing atop him for sex before he had a chance to ask how things were going with the books. Afterward, she fell asleep, and he lay there stroking the frills along her back, thinking of how much he wanted to live here with her. He would live anywhere with her, but here was his first choice.
He drifted off again, and next time woke to Merit knocking on the bottom of the bed. “Jade? Flower says she found something.”
They gathered in the teachers’ hall, under the branches of the carved glade. Stone had reappeared, aborting the argument about who would go and get him. Vine brought Pearl, River, Drift, and a few other Aeriat back from wherever they had been. Chime, Bone, Knell, and Bell were here, but none of the others had been summoned. Everyone seemed to intend to wait until they had a coherent plan before calling everyone else together to hear it. Though given the speed with which news spread among the Arbora, calling a meeting of the entire court probably wouldn’t be necessary.
While everyone found a place and sat down, Flower settled in the center of the group. She had a roll of paper in her lap, its painted leather case lying nearby. “We found a mentor’s journal that speaks of the seeds. Unfortunately it doesn’t speak of what to do when a colony tree loses its seed. I suspect we may be the first court to ever have this problem, at least as far as our ancestors knew.”
Jade snorted in bitter amusement. “Why does that not surprise me.” Moon had been thinking the same thing.
Pearl spared her a glare, and prompted Flower, “Then what does it say?”
“It says how the seeds are made.” Flower tapped the roll of paper in her lap. “They’re taken from the heart of a mountain-thorn, a very rare plant that grows only in these western Reaches. This tree was seeded from a mountain-thorn about four to five days of warriors’ flight from here, which is occupied by the court of Emerald Twilight. Or it used to be occupied by it, when this was written.”
“They’re still there.” Stone’s expression was at its most opaque. He didn’t seem to find this news as encouraging as everyone else did. “I saw their scouts when I was here two turns ago. They’re the oldest court in this reach, and the largest.”
Jade leaned forward, her expression intent. “So we can ask them for another seed?”
Flower nodded. “I think it’s our best hope. Of course we don’t know if there are any to spare, but we can certainly ask.”
Everyone looked at Pearl. She twitched her tail angrily. “I suppose it’ll have to be a formal embassy.” She said this as if it was a terrible thing to contemplate.
Moon looked at Jade, whose expression was more disgruntled than grim. No one else seemed taken aback by the idea of a formal embassy either. Apparently Pearl just didn’t like other Raksura. At least it’s not just me, he thought.
“We’ll have to go begging to them,” Pearl added, her tail flick turning into a full-out lash. Her warriors sidled away a little, out of immediate hitting range.
Jade told her, “I’ll go. If you go, it will look like begging.”
Pearl eyed her angrily. “You’ve never greeted another queen before, not as an embassy. You never even went to Wind Sun.”
Jade bristled. “I would have, if I’d been given the chance.” She looked away for a moment, clearly gathering her patience. “It’s a good time for me to learn.”
Pearl was obviously torn between not wanting to give Jade an important responsibility, and hating the idea of going herself. She finally said, “Fine, then. You’ll leave tomorrow.”
Moon felt the tension in Jade’s body relax, and he took a breath of relief himself. They had a plan, a chance, or at least a way to get more information, and Pearl wasn’t going to be difficult about it. Or no more
difficult than she normally was, anyway.
Then Stone cleared his throat. Pearl regarded him steadily for a moment. “What?”
He said, “Indigo Cloud doesn’t have an alliance with Emerald Twilight.”
Pearl dismissed it. “We’ll offer alliance. They have no reason not to accept.”
Moon managed to keep his expression blank. Emerald Twilight had no reason not to accept because Pearl hadn’t been here to antagonize them, the way she had Wind Sun, the court that had refused to help fight the Fell.
Stone scratched his neck, and added thoughtfully, “We almost went to war with Emerald Twilight, before Indigo Cloud left the Reaches.”
There was a startled murmur from everyone. “War?” Flower repeated, incredulous.
“Are you serious?” Jade demanded.
Pearl lifted her spines. “Was it something you did? Just tell us.”
Stone glared at her. “I was barely ten turns old.” Under Jade and Pearl’s concentrated stares, he admitted, “Indigo stole Cloud from a daughter queen at Emerald Twilight. I forget her name.”
“Stole?” It was Moon’s turn to stare. “What… how… That can happen?”
“We can only hope,” River put in, nastily. Drift snickered.
Moon met River’s gaze in deliberate challenge. “Do you need another beating?”
“Quiet, both of you,” Pearl snapped. She turned back to Stone. “Was Cloud taken?”
“Yes. The daughter queen took him when he was too young, and after a few turns, it wasn’t working out. There was no clutch yet.” Stone shrugged. “At least that’s our side of the story. I have no idea if that’s actually true or not.”
Bone shook his head, affronted. “Is this even in the histories?”
Flower groaned and rubbed her eyes. “I’ve never seen it there. And I’m fairly certain I’d remember.”
This sounded serious. Nobody seemed to think that maybe Emerald Twilight would have forgotten the incident by now. Moon wasn’t even sure what they meant by “stolen.” Kidnapped, carried off? Like the Fell did with the Arbora? He didn’t need anything new to worry about.