The Books of the Raksura: The Complete Raksura Series

  And having Rift speak for him didn’t decrease Moon’s irritation. Moon said, pointedly, “I had a choice.”

  Rift threw a glance at him, half-angry, half-wary. “To compete for a queen or to be a useless burden to the court?”

  If Stone had heard that, he ignored it. Balm hissed and Song and Vine bristled angrily. Glaring at Rift in annoyance, Karsis said, “You know, I don’t think anyone here cares for your opinion. I know I never have.”

  Rift barred his teeth at her. Then Root, seething with indignation, said, “Moon was a solitary, too, and he stays with Jade because he wants to.”

  Rift stared at Moon, so incredulous his spines flattened. Vine thumped Root in the side of the head, and hissed, “No more talking. Ever.”

  Moon set his jaw. Rift had always had a hold on him; now he would know what it was. Rift said, “That’s… Consorts don’t leave their courts…”

  “Tell him the story,” Moon said. He walked away and circled around Stone to take up a position under the passage. Stone, proving that he had been listening, heaved a deeply annoyed sigh.

  There was a long moment of awkward silence from the other side of the walkway, then Moon heard Balm speak quietly to Vine. Vine gestured and Rift, still badly shocked, followed him down the walkway to talk. Song shook her head grimly at Root, whose spines drooped with embarrassment.

  Time seemed to drag. Standing still, without immediate danger as a distraction, Moon could feel every cut and slash that had penetrated his scales, the exhaustion dragging at him like a net, making his wings feel like they were iron weights. It had been a long time since he had shifted to groundling, but if he did it now he might fall down and not be able to get up again.

  As they waited, everyone showed signs of fatigue: Balm’s spines were drooping, Root had trouble keeping his eyes open, and River leaned against a pillar, trying to pretend it wasn’t holding him up. There was only so much more of this they could take without a chance to eat and rest. He hoped Ardan was tired too, and feeling the strain of doing so much magic at once. But Moon was willing to bet Ardan had had time to stop for a meal, and they hadn’t.

  There was a scrabbling in the passage above them, then Floret and Chime dropped out.

  The others bounded over to gather around, Esom and Karsis hurrying after them. Floret reported, “We got all the way up to this room full of stinking vines in barrels. There were two blue groundlings in the corridor just past it. Chime said they belonged to the sorcerer.”

  “I didn’t feel any barriers,” Chime added. “I bet Ardan doesn’t know about this way out.”

  Moon nodded, thinking it over. Ardan must believe that the people who were trading with the water travelers only used that doorway to the flooded street. “If the guards are there, then Ardan is still in the mortuary. Maybe he didn’t get the dome open yet.” And everyone on the leviathan must have felt the jolt when Moon had removed the crystal piece. Maybe Ardan had more to deal with at the moment than just the Raksura.

  “But he must be trying to get it open,” Chime said. “Even if we can get past the guards and get into the mortuary, he’ll be right there.”

  “So how do we get past him?” Balm said, frustrated.

  Moon shook his head. “We can’t. We have to talk to him.”

  River snarled skeptically. “What, so he can feed us to the leviathan again?” Drift hissed agreement.

  Moon didn’t bother to argue that. The trick was going to be to make Ardan want to talk more than he wanted to get rid of them. He looked at Esom. “That spell you did, the one that made it so no one could see you and Karsis when you were trying to get out of the tower. Can you do that again?”

  Esom straightened his cracked spectacles, and nodded. “Yes. You want me to use it so we can get back into the mortuary without anyone knowing we’re there?”

  “Will that work? Can you get past Ardan?”

  “I… think so. I know I can hide myself and one other person, reliably.” Esom hesitated, his expression uncertain. He admitted, “Ardan was always distracted when I tried the spell inside his tower.”

  “I can distract him,” Rift said. He bristled his spines uneasily as everyone turned to stare at him. “He’ll listen to me.” He looked at Moon. “You know he will.”

  Behind them, Stone shifted to groundling. Esom flinched and cursed, Karsis just stared in fascination. Stone folded his arms and regarded Rift thoughtfully.

  Rift threw him a frightened look but held his ground. Still focusing on Moon, he said, “You know it’s true. He wants me back, doesn’t he? He’ll talk to me.”

  Moon let out his breath. Yes, Ardan wanted Rift back. Moon just wasn’t sure what Rift wanted. “If you tell him about Esom’s spell, what we’re planning—”

  “You’ll kill me, I know.” Rift glanced around at the others, spines lowered. “I didn’t mean to hurt your court. I thought the colony tree was abandoned forever. If I’d known you were coming back—”

  “That’s not the point.” Stone’s voice cut across Rift’s, silencing him immediately. It was the first time Stone had spoken directly to him. “That colony tree is our court.”

  Rift flattened his spines but said, “A court is Aeriat and Arbora, not the empty shell of a tree. For all I knew, your court had died out and I was doing the tree a favor, letting it die so it wouldn’t live forever alone.”

  Stone grimaced, equal parts irritation and disgust, probably because Rift had given him an answer that was hard to argue with.

  Moon asked Rift, “What do you want in return?”

  If Rift said “Nothing,” Moon wasn’t going to believe him. Rift wasn’t the self-sacrificing type, even if he did feel sorry about the colony tree. But Rift said, “When you find a way to leave the leviathan, take me with you. I want to go back to the forest Reaches. Ardan may want me back, but he’ll never trust me again, and I can’t trust him.” His scales rippled uneasily. “And I’m sick of this place.”

  Moon thought it rang true, but he didn’t quite trust his own judgment when it came to this. The others watched Rift with varying degrees of skepticism, doubt, and even a little sympathy. Moon looked at Balm. She studied Rift carefully, her eyes narrowed. She caught Moon’s gaze, and gave him a grimace of doubt and a slow reluctant nod.

  That summed up Moon’s feelings accurately. He told Rift, “All right, we have a deal. Don’t make me regret it.”

  

  Moon and Rift crept up the tunnel, climbed through a doorway that had been knocked out of the wall and into the edilvine chamber. Making their way silently past the stinking barrels, Moon saw there were now three blue-pearl guards in the passage. Most of their attention was on the upper part of the passage, as if they were expecting someone to try to come in through the smugglers’ entrance. Which made it easy when Moon and Rift barreled in among them and knocked them flat.

  Moon kicked a dart gun away from the one that was sprawled on the ground but still conscious, and told him, “Go tell Ardan that Moon and Rift want to talk. We have something he wants. Say that to him.”

  The man scrambled back, shoved to his feet, and ran.

  Then they waited, Moon still and Rift pacing and lashing his tail. “What if he doesn’t—” Rift began, and Moon hissed at him to be quiet. If Ardan didn’t take the bait, he had no idea what they were going to do.

  He heard the groundlings coming back, at least six of them. They approached cautiously up the passage, one carrying a small vapor-lamp. Another craned his neck, trying to see the two men still lying unconscious in the shadows. Moon said, “They’re alive.”

  The guard stared, startled. Either by the fact that the Raksura hadn’t killed and eaten the men as a matter of course, or that Moon had thought the other guards would care. The one in the lead said, stiffly, “The Magister will speak with you.”

  The others moved back against the walls. Moon walked past them and Rift followed. Moon caught a whiff of fear-sweat, but no one pulled out a dart gun at the last instant. As he and Ri
ft went toward the passage into the mortuary, he heard the guards move to collect the unconscious men.

  Esom and Stone would be waiting down in the edilvine tunnel, and would follow them under the concealment of the spell. Esom could only make the spell big enough to conceal Stone in his groundling form, but Moon hadn’t thought there would be any possibility of Stone sliding the dome’s door open without Ardan noticing. But if Ardan tried to turn on them, Stone would be there. And Moon wasn’t leaving without Jade and Flower.

  They reached the doorway, where more nervous guards waited, and went past them, down the steps into the huge chamber. Moon had asked Rift if Ardan would have been able to make more warden-creatures by this time. Rift had said that even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to let the creatures run loose with his guards here. Moon hoped he wasn’t lying.

  Shadows still clung to the upper half of the room, concealing the vaulted ceiling and the tops of the huge pillars, but more vapor-lamps had been lit. Moon spotted Ardan immediately. He waited under a lamp stand, about fifty paces from the doorway, with a large group of his guards spread out behind him. Beside Moon, Rift twitched uneasily.

  Moon couldn’t see the dome from here. It was somewhere past the shadowy outline of the undead waterling’s tail. He couldn’t see the spot on the far side of the chamber where Ardan had made the floor dissolve, either.

  He started across the wide expanse of pavement toward Ardan, and tried not to look as if he was thinking about it disappearing under him at any moment. He and Rift stopped ten paces away from the sorcerer.

  Ardan said, easily, “Rift, it’s good to see you well. I hope they haven’t treated you badly.”

  Rift twitched again, uncomfortable. He couldn’t seem to meet Ardan’s gaze. “No. Not… No.”

  Ardan turned to Moon and assessed him cautiously. “I didn’t expect to see you alive.”

  It was nice of Ardan to admit it. “We’re hard to kill,” Moon said. “But it turned out for the best.”

  Ardan’s mouth tightened. Moon thought, he guessed we were responsible for the jolt, but he was hoping he was wrong. Ardan said, “I felt the leviathan’s distress. I take it that was something you did?”

  “I don’t think the leviathan was distressed. I think it was relieved.” Moon hoped they were right about what the crystal piece did. If Ardan laughed in his face at this point, they were going to be in a lot of trouble. “The thing that was telling it what to do is gone.”

  Ardan’s self-control wasn’t quite perfect, and Moon could hear the tension in his voice. “What thing?”

  “The metal piece with the crystals. The one down there, in the pillar that cuts through the leviathan’s hide. The one that lets you use the power in the seed to send the leviathan all over the sea, anywhere you want.”

  There was an uneasy ripple among the guards, but no one seemed surprised or appalled—as if they suspected Ardan had been lying to the whole city but didn’t like to hear it mentioned aloud.

  Ardan’s expression hardened into annoyance. He glanced at the guards, and said, “You’re wrong, of course, no one can steer the leviathan. But that device, the leviathan’s bridle, is almost a legend. I’ve seen drawings, but…” With grim urgency, he said, “This creature could decide to sink at any moment. You could kill us all.”

  Yes, that’s the point, Moon thought. He said, “Then give us the seed. It’s useless to you without the bridle, isn’t it? You’ve got a choice: lose all of your control over the leviathan, or just part of it.”

  Ardan took a deep breath and watched him appraisingly. “You don’t have it with you.”

  Moon flicked his spines, though Ardan couldn’t read that as a gesture of dismissal. “Of course not.”

  “The others have it,” Rift said suddenly. “I’ve seen it.”

  Ardan gave Rift a slight nod of thanks. Still thoughtful, he said to Moon, “As you must have guessed, I wasn’t able to open the sanctum. There is a wheel on the inside that operates the door, and whoever is in there was clever enough to find a way to jam it.”

  Moon was fairly certain that a queen and a mentor working together had had absolutely no difficulty finding a way to jam the mechanism. Especially since they would have felt no need to be careful with whatever materials were available inside the dome. He just said, “They’ll open it for me.”

  Ardan lifted a brow. “And would your companions trade both the seed and the bridle for you?”

  Moon showed all his teeth. “If you try that, they’ll smash your bridle and scatter the pieces in the sea.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Ardan smiled thinly. “Perhaps you’re too valuable to them. You are a consort. I know what that means.”

  Rift said, “No. He’s like me, he was a solitary. His queen is the only one who wants him and she’s trapped in the sanctum. They won’t trade for him.”

  Moon flinched. It wasn’t true; it was just Rift trying to help, melding truth with lies, which was apparently what he did best. It was just an accident that he had hit so close to the bone.

  Ardan’s brow furrowed. His sharp gaze hadn’t missed Moon’s reaction. He said, “You’re certain?”

  Rift had nothing in his voice but complete conviction. “They would never have sent a consort they cared about into your tower. Not even to save a colony tree seed.”

  Moon set his jaw, and tried to ignore the sinking sensation in his stomach. They didn’t send me, I sent myself. Jade would never have agreed to the plan if she had been there to object. Somehow knowing that didn’t help.

  Ardan hesitated, his face hard. He doesn’t want to make the trade, but he can’t see another way out,Moon thought. You hope he can’t see another way out.

  Then a guard approached from out of the shadows in the direction of the mortuary’s main entrance. He moved forward cautiously, saluted Ardan with a half bow, and said, “Magister, please.”

  Ardan said, through gritted teeth, “Excuse me a moment.” He turned and moved back to the line of guards to talk to the man. They faced away, speaking in whispers, and not in Kedaic.

  Quietly, in Raksuran, Moon asked Rift, “Can you understand them?”

  Rift glanced down. “Yes, they’re speaking Ilisai, a trader’s language. He said Magister Lethen is at the gate with Magisters Giron and Soleden. They have all their guards with them, and they say they have firepowder.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A weapon. It makes a big burst of fire. The fishermen use it to keep the giant waterlings away.” Rift listened a moment more. “The guard says that the people are gathering in this area, too. When they felt the leviathan jolt, someone ordered the traders to cast off and the fishing boats to be secured for a move, so everyone knows something is wrong.”

  “Good.” Moon rippled his spines, trying to release the tension in his back. That explained why the guards had been in the passage. Ardan had known the other magisters would be trying to get inside, and if any of them knew about the smuggler’s entrance, they might have enough magic of their own to get through his barrier.

  Ardan turned away from the messenger. From his expression, none of this was welcome news. He said to Moon, “Very well. I’ll return the seed in exchange for the bridle. If Rift will be good enough to go and get it now.”

  That hadn’t been in Moon’s plans. “After you let us go with the seed.”

  Ardan’s expression was derisive. “I’m not a fool. Then you’d have both.”

  Moon bared his fangs. “I don’t want both.”

  Ardan held out for a long moment, then took a sharp impatient breath. “Send Rift for the bridle. You and I will go and get the seed. We’ll make the exchange here.”

  Moon controlled a frustrated hiss. He could continue to argue, but he didn’t want the other magisters to break this up anymore than Ardan did. He told Rift, “Go and get it.”

  Rift flicked his spines in assent, threw an opaque look at Ardan, and bounded away toward the doorway to the tunnel.

  Ardan started
toward the dome and the guards hastily moved out of his way. Moon followed him, forcing himself not to twitch under the suspicious regard of a large group of hostile groundlings.

  He took in a quiet breath and tasted the air. There was no hint of Stone or Esom, but then the air was thick with rot, the leviathan’s stench, and decaying preserved waterling. Using Esom’s concealment spell, the two of them should be working their way around the outer perimeter of the big chamber, as far away from the guardsmen and Ardan as possible.

  Once they were past the bulk of the dead waterling, Moon could see the dome. Ardan hadn’t lied; it looked undisturbed, except for some new scratches and scuffs at the door seam where the guards must have tried to pry it open.

  As they reached the dome, Ardan said easily, “Continue to speak in Kedaic, please. I wouldn’t want reason to doubt our arrangement.”

  Moon didn’t argue. He stepped up to the door and tapped on it. “Jade, it’s me.” He couldn’t hear anything from inside, but after a long, fraught moment, something creaked in the wall and the door began to slide open. It stopped, leaving a gap only a pace or so wide. Jade stepped into the opening.

  Moon realized that until that moment he hadn’t been certain that she and Flower were really still inside the dome, that this hadn’t been an elaborate ruse by Ardan. She was still in her winged form, her spines bristling. Moon heard muted exclamations from some of Ardan’s men. They sounded startled and uneasy, as if Jade was more formidable than they had expected. Jade kept her expression neutral, though her gaze flicked over Moon briefly, possibly looking for open wounds. Then, with a slight narrowing of her eyes, she regarded Ardan.

  He said, “I had never expected to see a Raksuran queen in the flesh.”

  Jade tilted her head inquiringly. “Have you seen many dead ones?”

  Ardan smiled, acknowledging the hit. “I’ve seen the wall carvings.”

  Moon said, “We’re giving him the thing that he needs to keep the leviathan from sinking, and he’s going to let us leave with the seed.”