The Cloud Roads (28 page)

Jade and Balm sat on a fallen log, talking to Bone who, even in groundling form, looked almost toad-like compared to the more delicate Aeriat. River and Drift sprawled on the ground nearby, bored and restless. Song, Root, Sand, and the other warriors slept under the tree roots.

Chime sat a little apart, near Flower’s pile of ingredients, studying the poison-making instructions. Moon took a seat next to him, and Chime glanced up, then frowned. “Are you all right?”

“Sure, just... tired.” Moon self-consciously avoided looking toward Jade. Across the clearing, Pearl stepped out of the ferns. Showing absolutely no interest in Moon, she walked over to sit down near Bone.

Chime grunted and went back to the leaf. “Don’t breathe the fumes. If anyone stands too close, it makes them woozy.”

No one else seemed to be listening, so Moon asked, “Is it true that queens mark their consorts?”

Chime nodded. “It’s something only other queens can scent.” He peered at Moon a little uncertainly. “Are you worried about that? I mean, it wouldn’t hurt. It just tells other queens that you’re taken, so they don’t fight over you.”

“I just wondered.” If Pearl wasn’t lying, it meant that Moon had given up his only advantage, that there would be no reason now for the others to stop Pearl from driving him out. He didn’t even blame Jade. Not much, anyway. He had refused her gifts, and after that she had asked him for a clutch, not to be her consort. It was just that after hearing about the other queens and consorts, he had assumed it was the same thing.

But it didn’t change anything. He had known that he would have to fight Pearl and her allies if he wanted to stay. Now it would be harder.
If it’s true,
he reminded himself.

He glanced up to find Pearl watching him, and looked away, resisting the urge to bare his teeth at her. Then he found himself staring at Chime. Under the bronze of Chime’s skin, on his forehead and cheek, there were green-black discolorations, bruises on top of bruises. In the shadows last night, Moon hadn’t noticed, but in the daylight it was obvious. “Did you have another bad landing?”

“What? Oh.” Chime frowned at the ground, scratching absently at the moss with his heel, as if he had forgotten he was in groundling form and didn’t have a claw there. “No.”

“Somebody hit you.” Moon felt a growl building in his chest. “Pearl?”

Chime snorted. “Pearl doesn’t know I’m alive.” He twitched uncomfortably under Moon’s continued stare, and finally admitted, “It was River.”

“Balm didn’t help you?” Moon looked across the clearing. He had thought Balm and Chime were friends, at least from the way they had played together in the lake. She sat near Jade, her chin propped on her hand, listening to the others talk. Her expression was glum and her body drooped with exhaustion.

Chime shrugged wearily. “When she’s around. But she and Vine were gone to Wind Sun for days, and... I don’t want to ask her for help. I don’t want them to gang up on her. She’s Jade’s clutch-mate, and they’ve always been together, and with Pearl at odds with Jade, Balm’s position is hard enough. What are you doing?”

Moon stood and crossed the clearing to stand over River.

River looked up at him with a smile. “Was Chime begging you for help?” It was as if he had overheard their conversation, or been waiting for Moon to notice Chime’s bruises.

“You’re going to be begging for help.” Moon was certain his first mistake at Indigo Cloud had been not beating River insensible at the earliest opportunity. But he had just enough sense left to know it would be better if River attacked him first.

“What do you care?” River shoved himself upright, sneering, leaning forward in challenge. “You’re a mongrel solitary, acting like you think you’re first consort when you’re not even part of this court.”

That stung more than River could know. Moon kept his voice even. “I’m still a consort. That’s something you’ll never have, no matter how many queens you sleep with.”

River snarled, flushing a darker copper. “You’re the one who came here to hide. You’re the one who brought the Fell down on us. They followed you to the mountains thinking you were running away again. They came here for you, because you went to them!”

Moon fell back a step. The whole clearing went silent; even the wind stopped. The hunters exchanged uneasy looks, whispering to each other. Woken by the commotion, the Aeriat were watching, startled and wary. Flower and Bone both stared at Pearl.

Pearl’s spines lifted and she snapped, “River. That’s enough.”

Jade came to her feet. She glanced at Pearl, her expression tight with fury. In a growl, she said, “Moon, leave it. We can’t afford a fight now.”

Maybe not, but they were going to have one. And if he wasn’t her consort, then he had no obligation to listen to her. “Then keep us from shifting.”

Jade’s eyes went hooded. “Done.”

“What?” River looked from Jade to Pearl. Moon saw his eyes narrow when he tried to shift and failed. He glared at Jade, hissing in annoyance.

Moon asked, “Afraid?”

“You’re too much of a coward to fight in the air,” River began. Moon shut him up with a punch to the face.

Moon didn’t know how to have a serious fight as a Raksura without killing or crippling his opponent. But as a groundling, he knew plenty. River staggered back, then surged forward with a snarl, tackling Moon. Moon landed hard on his back but brought a knee up and rolled, throwing River to one side. They both scrambled upright and River, growling in earnest now, ducked a punch and nearly slammed a blow into Moon’s throat.

They fought across the clearing, smashing into the undergrowth, slamming each other into trees, sending hunters scrambling away. Then Moon caught River with a hard punch in the gut, and kicked him in the chin when he doubled over.

River dropped in the dirt, tried to get up, but sank back down, panting with effort. Moon leaned over him, grabbing his hair to lift his head up. His voice rough from the blow to his throat, he said, “Talk all you want. But if you want to fight, you fight me.”

River bared his teeth, but it was a half-hearted gesture.

Moon dropped him, turned his back, and walked away. He had no idea where he was going, just away from the clearing, away from the stares and accusations. His hands hurt, though he couldn’t feel his other bruises yet; Raksuran heads were harder than groundling, so he had had to hit River hard enough to bruise his knuckles.

He was barely past the first stand of trees when Chime caught up with him. Sounding bewildered, Chime said, “Is it true?”

Moon didn’t stop, didn’t look at him. The hurt tone in Chime’s voice just made it all the worse. “Yes. Some of it.”

“But you went to the Fell?”

Moon shook his head. “Go ask Flower. She knows.”

Chime stopped, and Moon kept walking, weaving away through the trees, looking for a quiet spot away from the blind.

At least Pearl wasn’t holding it in reserve to use against him anymore.

Chapter Sixteen

M
oon spent the rest of the morning in a tree near the clearing in his shifted form, hanging upside down by his tail from a branch. The hunters kept watch on him, the way they kept watch on all the Aeriat on Jade’s orders, but no one came after him. That was probably for the best, because he was so bitterly angry he couldn’t think straight.

He knew the Fell hadn’t attacked Indigo Cloud because of him; it didn’t make sense. Even if the Fell had shamen that could predict where Moon would be, they had had plenty of time to come after him before this. The Fell had been moving all over the east for the past twenty turns, and so had Moon. And yes, it had been a mistake to go to the Fell in Saraseil, and no one knew that better than him. But if these Fell felt betrayed because Moon had killed the ruler Liheas there after all this time, then that was crazy.

Moon had never faced a ruler before, and he had been younger then and not as strong. He had one chance to escape, and it had been better to wait for Liheas to sleep, even if he had to pretend to believe the lies and let Liheas touch him. And he had no idea why he was trying to justify this to himself. Fell killed groundlings like cattle, tortured them for pleasure, and destroyed their homes; if the Fell didn’t want to be killed in return, that was just too damn bad.

Restless, Moon gripped the branch with his tail more tightly, his scales scraping through the bark. He had no idea if Jade still wanted him after this, if she hadn’t counted on having to tell the others about what he had done in Saraseil, or their reaction to it. If Pearl was telling the truth and Jade already had a clutch, she didn’t need him anymore.

That hurt more than anything.

He knew that Pearl had driven off consorts that had been born into the court because they had belonged to other queens, or because she hadn’t wanted to look at them after her own consort had died. He knew she wouldn’t hesitate to try to drive him off, if Jade did nothing to stop her. His only option would be to fight, to hurt or kill Raksura he had no real quarrel with, to stay in a place where no one wanted him.

That’s if we survive the attack tonight,
he reminded himself. They still needed him for the battle at least.

After that... Jade had said that having seen what a Raksuran court was like, he wouldn’t be able to settle anywhere else.
She was still wrong,
he thought, his anger tinged with that familiar sense of resignation.
I wasn’t able to settle anywhere else before this, either.

He tried to ignore the traitor voice that whispered,
And if this Fell flight is following you, for whatever insane reason of its own?
That meant no more groundling camps or cities, either.

When the shadows were lengthening toward afternoon, a hunter came to the base of the tree and said, diffidently, “Moon? They want you to come and look at the poison.”

What Moon wanted was to hang in this tree until it was time to go be killed by the Fell. But he dropped to the ground, shifted to his groundling form, and followed her back to the clearing.

The others were gathered there, a cautious distance from the pit. Moon tasted the air and knew why. This close to the liquid, the weedy odor had taken on an intensity that made his stomach want to turn.

He stopped at the edge of the group. The hunters and the Aeriat flicked looks at him, and some tried to unobtrusively sidle away. Chime stood over the pit with Flower, watching her stir the contents. He saw Moon and twitched uneasily, turning his attention back to the poison. Jade turned toward him, but Moon avoided her eyes. Pearl, standing at the opposite side of the pit, ignored him.

Moon didn’t see River, who was probably back at the blind, being catered to and sympathized with.

Flower looked up, her face flushed and hot. She saw him and held out one of the nut shells they were using as cups. “Moon, does this color look right? It’s changed from purplish to clear, like the sample in the flask.”

The group parted for him and he stepped forward, just close enough to see the contents of the cup. It had been night when Ilane had given him the poison, but he would have noticed a dark substance in the normally light green tisane. He nodded.

“Good. Now we have to test it.” Flower told the others, “If it needs another boil...”

“Yes, but we can’t test it on you,” Chime said in frustration. “We’ll need you when we enter the colony. Whoever we test it on might not recover in time.”

“Yes, I know, but I always test my simples on myself, and...” Flower took a few steps back and sat down heavily. “I think the fumes are getting to me.”

Chime flung his arms in the air, and Jade said, patiently, “Yes, Flower, that’s what we’ve all been trying to tell you.”

Balm said, “But we do need to test it. If we put it into the water and nothing happens, there won’t be a second chance.”

Behind Moon, someone cleared his throat.

“I’ll do it.”

Moon turned to see the youngest hunter, Strike, who had been the first to greet Jade last night. Strike said, “I want to fight in the battle, but I’m the smallest, so I’m the... most expendable?”

Bone scratched his head, and said reluctantly, “Not expendable, but... You are the smallest, and I’d thought to leave you behind anyway.”

Jade grimaced, watching the boy unhappily. Moon wanted to protest, to offer himself, though that made just as little sense as using Flower to test it. But the whole idea of deliberately putting an Arbora at risk, especially a young one, felt wrong down to his bones. He wished they could catch a dakti to test it on, but there was too great a chance that the other Fell might sense what was happening.

Jade said to Strike, “If you’re certain. If you’re not, tell us now.”

Strike twitched his spines, obviously uncomfortable with all the scrutiny, but he said, “I’m certain.”

Flower took the cup of poison and poured water into it from a skin. She handed the cup to Strike. “Better sit down.”

Strike took a seat on the mossy ground, careful not to spill the clear liquid. He looked down into it, biting his lip. “Should I shift to groundling?”

“Most of the Fell won’t be,” Bone said, crouching near the boy. “We might as well see what it does.”

Jade nodded. “Go ahead, Strike.”

The boy took a deep breath and downed the cup in one long gulp. Everyone watched uneasily.

Birds called in the trees, and somewhere on the far side of the stream a treeling squeaked. After a time, when nothing dramatic happened, some of the hunters started to relax, moving away a little to sit down in the dirt.

Chime began, “Maybe it’s not—”

Then Strike swayed a little, his eyelids drooping. “I’m really sleepy. Is that supposed to...” Suddenly he shifted to groundling and slumped over.

Bone caught him, easing him to the ground as Flower hurried over. She held a hand in front of Strike’s mouth, carefully pushed his eyelids up to look at his pupils, then put her head on his chest to listen to his heart. After a tense moment, she sat up, wiping the sweat off her forehead. “He seems well enough, just deeply asleep.”

Moon stepped closer. “Look at his arms.”

Bone turned Strike’s arm and pushed up the sleeve of his shirt. On the boy’s deep copper skin, lines were already appearing, very faint but growing darker, mimicking the scale pattern of his Raksuran form.

It had taken longer to work on Moon, but then he was bigger than Strike. He said, “That’s what it did to me. That’s how they knew.”

Jade looked at Pearl, her spines half-lifted in challenge. “Well?”

Pearl inclined her head, as if conceding a point to Jade. “We’ll go at nightfall.”

Moon hung around the fringes of the clearing as the others hurried to get ready. Strike was carried back to the blind to recover. Some of the hunters left to take a kill so everyone could eat before the battle. The others organized themselves to transfer the poison to waterskins, a messy and dangerous job. After the first one got woozy and had to stagger off, they sent for Niran and reorganized, with him being the one to fill the skins from the pit. The fumes didn’t seem to have any effect on him at all.

The others crouched on the ground nearby. Chime sketched a map of the river and the colony in the dirt. Moon leaned against a tree, just close enough to hear their plans. If they didn’t want him there, they could tell him to leave. Chime was saying, “We need to distract the kethel guarding the river, or we won’t be able to get close enough to get the poison into the channels that draw up the water.”

“We still don’t know if we’ll be able to shift once we get near the colony,” Pearl said, still sounding skeptical of the entire thing.

“We know that,” Jade said, her frills ruffled with tension. She turned to Bone.

“Exactly how close were the Arbora to the colony when they realized they couldn’t shift?”

Bone frowned, looking around at the others. “What did Blossom say? They were below the first terrace? Or closer?”

Balm stood. “I’ll go to the blind and ask her.”

Jade waved a distracted assent, and Balm headed out of the clearing.

Moon watched her go, mostly to have something to look at besides Jade. So he saw Balm glance back before she stepped into the undergrowth.

Huh,
Moon thought, not sure what it was about that glance that set off a warning. As if Balm had wanted to make sure she wasn’t followed. Moon was standing back against the thick trunk of the tree, at an angle, and he didn’t think she had seen him watching her.

It seemed unlikely. But there was no point taking chances. He pushed off the tree and picked his way through the ferns after her.

He realized almost immediately that she wasn’t walking toward the blind. She moved at an angle to it, to pass it at some distance and wind her way deeper into the forest. She avoided the sentries, the hunters posted in the trees near the blind and the clearing.

Even as he followed her, Moon couldn’t believe she was doing what it looked like she was doing. She wouldn’t betray Jade, let alone the rest of the court.
Not in her right mind,
he thought uneasily. There had to be another explanation.

They were perhaps a hundred paces past the blind, where the spiral and plume trees grew close together, linked by vines to form an almost impenetrable canopy overhead. She shifted, half-extending her wings to leap partway up the trunk of a plume tree.

Moon shifted too, sprinting through the undergrowth to catch up with her. He reached the base of the trunk and looked up to see her climbing rapidly; she was trying to get past the canopy to take flight. He still couldn’t believe it.

“Balm,” he called. “Where are you going?”

Her claws slipped on the wood as she twisted around. She stared down at him and her face was empty of expression, as if she hadn’t heard him, couldn’t see him.

Moon froze for one startled heartbeat.
All right, now I believe it.
He scrambled up the trunk after her. She climbed frantically, showering him with fragments of bark. She fought her way past the heavy branches, then jumped, flapping to get height. Right behind her, Moon planted both feet on the trunk and shoved off.

She rose over the trees with strong wing beats but Moon was stronger. He slammed into her from behind and caught her around the waist. She shrieked in rage, clawing at his arms, but he snapped his wings in and twisted to the side, using his weight to pull her off balance.

She flailed. A buffet from her wing caught him a stunning blow to the head, and they tumbled toward the ground.

They crashed through the leafy branches, and Moon made a desperate grab, catching hold of one. The branch bent under their weight, swinging them into the bole with a brutal thump, but it didn’t break. Balm abruptly stopped fighting and pulled her wings in, survival instinct overriding everything else.

Moon kept hold of her, not sure if the fall had shocked her back to her senses enough for her to save herself. He looked down and saw flashes of color through the undergrowth and the lower branches as all the Aeriat and most of the hunters crashed through the forest toward them.
Wonderful,
Moon thought sourly. This explanation wasn’t going to be easy. He picked out a mostly clear area of mossy ground, and dropped.

He extended his wings just enough to control their fall. They landed hard but intact. He let go of Balm and she stumbled away a step, then sat down on the moss, making no attempt to get away. The Aeriat and hunters arrived in a rush, surrounding them, most of them growling, others just baffled. Jade landed in front of Moon, her mane flared, and flung her arms up. “Quiet!” The others went silent. “Moon, what—”

“The Fell did something to her.” Moon said it rapidly, staying focused on Jade, trying to get the words out before somebody jumped him. “She was going to them.”

Balm looked up, shaking her frills back, staring at him incredulously. “How could you—I was not!”

“They must know we’re back, the same way they knew we left,” Moon insisted. “Now they’re calling her to them to find out why.”

The others muttered to each other again. Flower and Chime, at least, watched Balm worriedly. Pearl’s expression was completely opaque. River stood beside her, looking confused but vindicated. Struggling to her feet, Balm shouted, “I was not going to the Fell!”

The hard part was that Moon didn’t think she had any idea that she was lying. She looked more hurt and angry than anything else.

He said, “Then why didn’t you go to the blind like you said? Why didn’t you answer me?”

“Quiet, both of you.” Jade’s growl silenced the whole group again. She stepped forward, catching Moon’s wrist. He flinched, almost pulling away, but she was looking at the claw marks on his arms. Balm had torn into him hard enough to pierce the tough skin between his scales, leaving long scratches deep enough to sting. Jade looked at Balm, at her golden scales, unmarked.

Balm stared down at her claws as if she had no idea how Moon’s blood had gotten there. Jade asked quietly, “Where were you going, Balm?”

“I was—” Balm took a sharp breath, as if she couldn’t finish the sentence and didn’t know why. Her anger gave way to confusion and she shook her head. “I was just going to scout.”