Edge of Worlds

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Something’s changed,” Lithe said aloud. She opened her eyes and found herself facing Malachite.

They sat on the floor of the long cabin in the hull of the windship, where the groundlings took their evening meals. Shade crouched nearby, with some of the warriors, the groundling crew, and Niran and Diar gathered around. The food the groundlings had been about to eat still sat forgotten on the low table. Everyone stared worriedly at her, except for Malachite, who just looked thoughtful. Lithe remembered following the others into the room, but not what had happened after that. “I had a vision.”

“It came on you suddenly,” Malachite told her. “What did you see?”

Lithe closed her eyes to capture the images that wanted to slip away. “Something wants them to go inside. Something old. There’s another mentor there and it clouds his sight, he can’t see to warn them. It doesn’t mean to. It’s old and powerful and not like us.”

She opened her eyes. Diar glanced at Malachite, and asked Lithe, “You said something changed.”

Lithe hesitated, trying to sort through the thoughts that were hers and those the vision had brought. Sudden visions like this tended to fade fast. Then she had it. “Something has forced their hand. Will force their hand.” She took a sharp breath, the urgency that came with that fading image like a sudden punch in the chest. “The Fell are there.”

Malachite tapped a claw and Flicker leapt to obey. He brought Lithe a cup of tea and sat beside her. Lithe drank, the warm liquid soothing her throat, and Flicker patted her knee sympathetically.

Niran grimaced in frustration. “We can’t get there any faster.”

“I’m not sure it would help,” Lithe said. She concentrated, trying to tease out the last threads of true meaning. The images were blended with her own thoughts now, obscured with the color of her emotions. “The Fell are near them, watching. That’s all I have. I’m sorry.”

“It’s enough,” Malachite said.

Niran and Diar and all the others looked at her. “It is?” Diar said. She was asking the question the warriors and the other groundlings wanted to ask, but didn’t quite dare.

Malachite stood in one smooth motion. “It tells us they’re still alive.”

The others seemed a little reassured, and Lithe tried to be. But the vision had left a strong aftertaste of saltwater and death, and she was afraid.

Moon woke gradually, listening to familiar voices. He could tell from his sense of the sun’s passing that it was still a few hours until dawn. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, struggling back to consciousness. It took him a moment of staring at the copper-colored ceiling to remember where he was. Chime sat in front of the bench, watching Jade, Balm, and Rorra, who was spreading a fabric map out on the floor. Stone was gone and Delin was asleep on the opposite bench.

Rorra sat beside the map, having to tug her booted feet into a comfortable position. She propped an elbow on one of her knees and said, “Callumkal said he doesn’t wish to put you in danger.”

“I don’t want to be put in danger either, but we have to find the Fell, regardless of what we decide to do next,” Jade said.

Balm seconded, “Even if we decide to run, we have to know where they are. If they have a resting spot downwind of us, or anywhere between us and the ocean, they’re going to overtake us.”

“And if we see how many there are . . .” Jade flicked her spines uncertainly. “I don’t know. If this is a small flight, and they attacked with all their strength . . .”

Balm finished, “It still doesn’t make sense.”

“No,” Rorra agreed wearily.

Moon cautiously sat up on one elbow. The claw slash in his side was a dull ache. He could feel under the bandage that the cut was forming scar tissue. He could also smell dried fish. He sniffed the air, and Chime handed him a bowl of something that looked like chips of gray and white rock. “What is it?”

“Food,” Chime said. “Sort of.”

Moon took the bowl and bit into a chip. It tasted like fish. Terrible fish, but still fish. “Where is everybody?”

“Bramble is taking food to the warriors, and Stone went out on deck,” Chime said.

Rorra marked points on the map with a charcoal stick. “We’re here, and there are three islands nearby, that we know of.”

Moon leaned over to look. The islands were upwind of the escarpment, but to the southeast, and the wind had been strong and coming directly from the south since they had gotten here. He didn’t think they would detect much Fell stench from those islands, not unless the wind changed.

Rorra said, “This area is not inhabited or traveled by any species Kish has contact with. This map was made by the first scouts for the expedition, trying to locate the escarpment. But they weren’t trying to make accurate maps, they were just looking for the best routes, if you see what I mean. They only mapped what they could see from their air vessel.”

Jade tapped her claws on either side of the islands. “So there could be more small islands out here.”

“There could be anything out there.” Rorra’s expression was glum.

Jade exchanged a frustrated look with Balm. “This is going to be even more fun than I thought.”

Chime sat up suddenly. “Oh. The gleaners. Or whatever they were called.”

Moon frowned, remembering their night visit to the floating hive. “The ones who disappeared?”

“Yes, them.” Chime moved around Balm for a look at the map. “We thought the Fell took them to eat them.”

“Right.” Jade’s brow furrowed. “Why else would they take them?”

“Because they can make floating platforms,” Chime said.

Everyone stared at him. “Hmm,” Rorra said, and studied the map again.

Jade nodded slowly, her spines lifting. Balm said, “That might be it.”

The more Moon thought about it, the more sense it made. He said, “The Fell would know that the Kishan would have maps of the islands.”

“Yes,” Jade said. “And they would want something they could move around in. Like that giant sac the flight looking for the other forerunner city had.”

Rorra’s brows lifted. “Giant what?”

“The kethel can make sacs, to carry dakti. This one was . . .” Balm made a gesture, indicating something round and by her expression horrible. Moon had to admit that was about as close as he could come, too. “Hard to describe.”

Chime’s attention was all on the map. “The hive platform we saw looked like it was just drifting on the current. The kethel could push it, but they would want to keep it out here somewhere.” He tapped the circle of small islands.

“If it was on the other side of the escarpment, the currents are too strong. It would be carried out into the ocean.” Rorra traced a path through the islands. “I think it must be along here. This current makes a circular motion, you can tell by the pattern of the islands. If their platform drifted too far toward the open sea, they could easily turn it back.”

Jade said, “We should check this area first.”

“How can you do this without the Fell being aware of you?” Rorra asked. “If you can see them, surely they can see you.”

“To us, Fell have a distinctive . . . scent.” Jade’s hesitation was probably due to remembering that Rorra had a distinctive scent too. It was an awkward subject. “Stone will be able to tell they’re in the area from a much longer distance.”

Rorra nodded understanding. “So the wind patterns will let you eliminate a large territory with minimal effort.”

That would be the easy part, Moon thought. The difficult part was going to be getting close enough to see anything without getting eaten.

Late the next morning, Moon sat on one of the small boats with Chime and River. Rorra was at the steering lever and Kalam and Magrim were acting as crew. The sky was clear with only a scatter of white clouds, the air warm, the breeze cool and steady, and Moon had nothing to do except worry. It was just as tiring as being in the air searching for Fell, with none of the sense of accomplishment.

They had taken the boat around to the point on Rorra’s map where the current turned, and the islands were only distant smudges on the waterline. Stone had flown ahead to scout, and Jade and Balm had split off to skirt the islands. Moon and the others were to meet them here. There were so many questions that still needed answering, but at least they could find out where the Fell were nesting.

River, in his groundling form and sitting on the bench next to the rail, looked sour and bored and kept glaring at Moon like this was his fault. Moon had refused to stay out of the search, and Jade had refused to let him come with her or go with Stone, and going on the boat was the compromise they had reached. Chime and River were, in River’s words, “stuck guarding the stupid consort.” So far it had been an uneventful trip, with no sightings of Fell. Mostly Rorra and Magrim had guided the boat, listening and commenting occasionally while Kalam talked to Chime and Moon.

The Arbora, Delin, and the other warriors had been left back on the sunsailer, with orders to help the Kishan salvage the remains of the large flying boat. The small flying boat that had been tethered on the island for emergencies had been destroyed almost completely, leaving behind only a few chunks of moss from its railings and cabin walls.

Moon, sitting on the side railing, yawned. It was tempting to nap on the sun-warmed deck, but he was making himself stay awake. Last night, Jade had made sure all the warriors had a chance to sleep, but always left at least two on watch. Not that the Kishan weren’t watching too, but the Raksura were watching harder.

River sighed exaggeratedly and said, “So if they aren’t back by this afternoon, should we hunt?”

Moon said, “I’m the stupid consort, I can’t tell you to do anything.” River had spoken in Raksuran, but Moon answered in Altanic, not wanting to exclude the groundlings. Kalam snorted in amusement, Rorra lifted a brow, and Magrim, who was used to them by now, controlled a smile. River glared.

“That aside,” Chime said, leaning on the pole that supported the canopy over the steering mechanism. “There’s not a lot of food out here, just a few fish and lizards.”

“That’s probably why there aren’t any sealings around here,” Kalam said.

Chime nodded. “Right, but what are the Fell eating? There aren’t any groundlings.”

“They’re probably eating the dakti,” Moon said.

“Ugh,” Kalam said succinctly.

Moon felt the boat move, just a little push against the current. He stood and shifted. “Something’s in the water.”

River and Chime both flowed rapidly into their other forms. Rorra gripped the steering lever, Kalam turned to survey the water, and Magrim reached for the small fire weapon tucked under the bench.

Chime pointed suddenly. “Right there. Something under the surf—”

A dark shape broke the surface only a few paces from the rail. Water sprayed and the boat rocked. Moon caught the scent and flung out his arms. “Stop! It’s Stone!”

Magrim whistled in relief and lowered the fire weapon. “Can he give some warning next time?”

River sat down on the bench and pinched the bridge of his nose. Chime turned to Moon. “If I’d been in groundling form I would have pissed myself.”

“Some of us were in groundling form,” Rorra muttered sourly, taking the weapon from Magrim and stowing it back under the bench.

The water churned as Stone shifted out of his winged form, then he surfaced and caught hold of the rail. He looked up at Moon’s expression, then glanced around at the others. “Too close to the boat?”

“Too close,” Moon said, giving him a hand up.

“Sorry.” Stone heaved himself over the side and stood on the deck, dripping. “There’s a lot of sand in the current down here and it’s hard to see.”

“It’s fine,” Moon said. “Did you find anything?”

“They’re here, all right.” Stone jerked his chin toward the southeast. “Chime was right.”

“I was?” Chime looked gratified. “They’re using the gleaners?”

“They were. I found pieces of dead gleaners floating all through here.” Stone took a seat on the bench, his wet clothes forming a pool of saltwater. “As soon as I got close, I caught Fell stench, so I had a general direction. I went into the water to try to get a better idea of where they are, and their stench is in the current too. I followed it about as close as I could without them knowing I was there.”

Moon let his breath out. It was a relief that they were right. He gave Chime a nudge to the shoulder. “You saved us a lot of time searching.”

Chime’s spines flicked in pleasure. “Now we just need to figure out a way to get close and see how many there are.”

“That’s not going to be easy,” River said.

That was a vast understatement. Moon had no idea how they could do it out here on the open sea without being seen. But the Fell already knew they were here. He wasn’t sure how revealing that the Raksura knew where the flight was located would be giving away any vital information. He was about to say so, when Rorra said, “Can the Fell detect scent in the water, the way you can?”

“It’s not scent in the water,” Stone said. “It’s carried in the air just above the water. But Fell aren’t great scent-hunters, no.”

Rorra hesitated. “I could do it.”

Moon stared at her. Right. Rorra’s a sealing. He had almost forgotten. “You can still breathe underwater?” Delin had said that she had been altered to allow her to stay on land, and Moon had assumed it would make her unable to breathe water.

“I can’t go down to the depths anymore,” Rorra said, “and I’m slower than I used to be. But I could handle this.”

The faint wrinkles on Magrim’s brow deepened in worry. “Rorra . . . Are you sure?”

Kalam added, “You don’t have to. Just because you’re a sealing . . .” He hesitated, clearly not sure what to say. “Well, you don’t have to.”

She made a faint amused noise. “No. But I can get close enough to see them, without them seeing me.”

“Unless there’s a kethel in the water,” River pointed out.

Rorra didn’t appear concerned, though Moon was fairly sure she was. She said, “I came from a sea that has many large predators. I’m good at avoiding them.”

“You sure you want to do this?” Moon said. He didn’t want Rorra to die and he especially didn’t want to be the one to get her killed. He could imagine too many things that might go wrong.

She let out a gusty breath. “Someone will have to do it. It’s safer from the sea than the air.”

“There’s Jade and Balm,” River said suddenly, pointing.

Moon turned to look, and spotted two shapes flying toward them from the direction of the islands.

“Not Fell?” Magram said uneasily, shading his eyes to look.

Rorra and the Kishan probably couldn’t see anything yet. “Not Fell. I can see the color of their scales,” Moon told them.

Chime waved.

Jade and Balm approached rapidly. As they neared the boat, they banked and circled above it. First Balm, then Jade, dropped down to light on the railing, then stepped down onto the deck.

“Good news,” Jade told them as she furled her wings. “We found the Fell.”

“So did we,” Moon told her. He didn’t understand why Jade and Balm had changed their plan to search, or why they had gone so far to the south.

“In the sea, that way?” Stone pointed.

Jade frowned, and Balm looked baffled. “No,” Jade said, “on the second island, that way.” She pointed at a right angle to the direction Stone was pointing.

Chime turned to Rorra. “Could the current do that? Make it seem like the Fell were in the open water when they were actually on an island?”

Moon remembered the map, the way Rorra had drawn the current’s path with her hand, and he didn’t think so. Rorra confirmed it, saying, “No, not this current, not from the second island.”

“Then there’s two of them,” River said, turning to Jade. “Two flights.”

Moon let out his breath. He hated to say it, but River was right.

Stone rubbed his face. “Of course there are.”

Jade hissed in exasperation. “That’s all we need.”

Moon asked Jade, “Did you get close enough to see them?”

“Yes. They probably spotted us, but they didn’t try to come after us. They were dug in under an old ruin and we only saw two kethel.”

“Did the ruin look like it might have been part of the city, made by the same people?” Kalam asked.

Balm glanced at Jade, and spread her hands. “It was a structure made out of coral, looked fairly old.”

“How many were in the flight you saw?” Jade asked.

“We didn’t see them yet.” Moon looked at Rorra, wondering if she was still willing to carry out their plan. “Stone picked up their stench in the current.”

“I’m going to go take a look now.” Rorra sat down on the bench and started to unlace her boots. “And yes, I’m sure.”

Moon saw Jade’s confusion, then her expression cleared as she remembered what Rorra was. She said, “If we get you killed, Callumkal isn’t going to like it.”

Rorra glanced up, her smile thin. “Callumkal knows me too well.” She pulled her first boot off, and Moon saw her fins for the first time, folded and pinched together to make a rough foot-shape to fill the boot. They were dark with bruises and scar-tissue. It looked so painful it made Moon’s spines twitch in distress.

Kalam said, “Rorra’s careful. She won’t get hurt.” It sounded like a combination of loyal support and fervent hope to Moon.

Moon was trying to think of all the possibilities. Rorra’s scent wouldn’t matter in the water. The Fell wouldn’t be able to detect it there like a sealing would. “How fast can you swim?”

Rorra pulled off her other boot. On that leg the fins were missing, the limb ending in a rounded stump of scar tissue. “Not as fast as you can fly, so don’t expect me back immediately.”

Moon turned to Jade. “We need to get her closer to where Stone scented the Fell. Otherwise she’ll have to search for them and it will give them more time to find her first.”

Rorra stripped off her shirt and started to unbuckle her pants. The skin of her torso had only faintly visible scale patterns, but there were wide gill slits on either side of her chest. Magrim and Kalam both looked away. The Kishan, at least the Kish-Jandera, appeared to have a mild nudity taboo. That was probably another reason they had so much trouble getting used to Raksura.

Jade glanced at Stone. “Can you take her?”

“Sure.” Stone saw Rorra’s dubious expression, and said, “I won’t drop you from too high.”

“Lovely.” Rorra grimaced. She glanced around, saw Kalam and Magrim were still studiously looking away, and held out a hand to Moon. “I need help standing.”

He shifted to his groundling form to keep from accidentally poking her, stepped in and put an arm around her to help her stand. She looked at Stone. “How do we do this?”

Stone eyed her appraisingly, then smiled just a little. “Jump in, but stay on the surface. I’ll scoop you up.”

“What a comforting thought,” Rorra said, and jerked her head toward the rail.

Moon helped her limp over to it. Balm stepped up to take her hand and steady her from the other side. Rorra breathed, “Thank you.” Then she leaned forward and flipped over the rail and into the water.

Her body slipped through the low waves, fast and sleek, even with the missing fins. Stone waited until she was about fifty paces away, then he stepped up onto the rail and dove off the boat. He shifted before he hit the water and slid smoothly under the surface.

Confused, Kalam said, “I thought he was going to fly.”

Watching with narrowed eyes, Jade said, “He’s building up speed.”

Moon could see it too, the rapidly moving line of ripples just below the surface, angling away from the boat and Rorra. Then the ripples disappeared. Chime said, “I think he’s going to—”

The big dark body broke the surface with a powerful flap of wings and launched itself upward. Kalam and Magrim gasped. Stone caught the wind with the second flap and lifted smoothly into the air. Spray showered the boat.

“That was impressive,” Balm admitted.

It was. Moon wasn’t sure he would be able to do it.

Stone gained some height, water still sliding off his wings, then banked around. “I can’t see him,” Kalam said, rubbing his eyes in frustration. “I mean, I can see him, but I can’t make out detail.” He nodded toward the other Raksura. “I can see all of you fine.”

“I can’t see him either,” Moon said. He had always just considered it something that happened to line-grandfathers. No one else had ever remarked on it. He asked Chime, “Why is that?”

“I don’t know.” Chime shrugged his spines. “There isn’t a lot of mentor lore on line-grandfathers. For one thing, they’re rare, and for another . . .” He gestured toward Stone. “They don’t like to answer questions.”

Stone lined up for a dive toward Rorra. He flew low over the water, one clawed hand reaching down for her. It had to be frightening from Rorra’s perspective, even though she knew what was about to happen. Stone’s hand folded gently around her and pulled her out of the water. He tucked her against his chest, tilted up again, and banked around toward the direction where he had detected the Fell stench.

Jade sighed, and glanced around the little boat. “Well, we have a wait.”

They waited most of the afternoon. Moon had flown a little distance away and gone fishing, both because he needed to stretch his wings after the injury and because the dried fish from the sunsailer’s stores hadn’t been very satisfying. Magrim had admitted that the settlement he came from in Kish liked their fish raw, too. He got involved with showing Kalam how to slice one up and pick out the best bits. After they ate, the Raksura took turns napping, curling up on the warm deck. By unspoken consensus, they were getting ready for what could be another violent night.

At one point, while the others were resting, Jade told Moon, “Song apologized to me.”

“That’s good.” Moon could tell she meant a real apology, where she and Song had actually talked it over, and not just that Song had stopped arguing because Jade was the queen. “Was something bothering her?”

Jade shrugged her spines a little. “She’s been more aggressive, lately. It’s just a sign she’s growing up, wanting a more important place in the court. She’ll settle down.” Jade flicked a fish scale at Balm, sleeping nearby. “Balm was like that.”

Balm opened her eyes, glared sleepily, and brushed the scale off her nose.

When the light started to shade into evening, Magrim began to make worried comments about trying to sail back in the dark. “We can wait longer,” Moon told Jade. They were curled up in a corner together, Chime sitting nearby, and River napping beneath the bench on the opposite side of the deck. Balm was taking a turn at watch, sitting on the railing. “If we have to go back after dark, we can tell him which direction to sail in.” Raksura, with an inborn knowledge of where south was, didn’t need compasses.

“Yes, but there are rocky patches and reefs through here,” Jade said. “We could see them as we were flying over. It might be more than tricky if—”

Then Balm said, “I see Stone.”

Stone slung himself up onto the rail, and held down a hand for Rorra. He said, “Help her, she’s not in good shape.”

“Is she hurt?” Jade said, moving Moon aside. She leaned over the rail, caught Rorra around the waist, and heaved her up and onto the boat. Rorra slid down to a sitting position on the deck. Her face was drawn and gray with exhaustion and her body was wracked with hard shivers.

“Just tired and cold.” Stone swung himself onto the deck.

Moon knew being carried by Stone at high speed in a strong wind was not a pleasant experience. He said, “Kalam, is there something to dry her off with?”

Kalam opened one of the supply boxes and dug out a drying cloth that might be used to clean the deck, but it was good enough for an emergency. Moon took it and crouched in front of Rorra, holding it up. She nodded, her teeth still chattering, and Moon started to dry her arms and legs.

Above his head, Stone said, “We have a problem.”

“An additional problem?” Jade said. “Because if it’s two different flights of Fell—”

“Rorra saw a half-Raksuran Fell. A queen.”

Everyone went silent. Moon froze for an instant, then Rorra shivered again under his hands and he went back to drying her legs. “Get her clothes,” he said.

Kalam moved first, bringing Rorra’s shirt, jacket, and pants.

Jade said, finally, “You’re sure? You saw it too?”

Stone said, “No, just Rorra. But she described it, and it can’t be anything else.”

Jade hissed out a curse. Balm said, “Did she see any others? If there’s mentor-dakti—”

“That was the only one she saw,” Stone said. Moon thought, one’s enough. Especially if it was a female Fell ruler with the abilities of a Raksuran queen. Stone continued, “Like we thought, the Fell were on a floating platform thing, like the hive the gleaners built. Most of them were inside and she didn’t get a chance to count them, or see if there were any others that didn’t look like Fell.”

Moon guided Rorra’s arms into her shirt, then put the rest of her clothes over her legs like a blanket. Rorra said in a choked voice, “Apparently sealings don’t fly well.”

“I don’t know, it sounds like you did great,” Moon told her. “Chime, River, come here and sit on either side of her.” Raksuran bodies were the best heat source on the boat right now.

Chime moved over to sit by the rail, squeezing in next to Rorra. River, startled by Stone’s revelation, didn’t argue, just shifted to his groundling form and moved to crouch down on her other side.

Kalam and Magrim had been hovering nearby, watching Rorra worriedly. Kalam said, “We should start back now. We need to get around the islands before dark.”

Jade told him, “Yes, as fast as the boat can go.”

Balm asked, “Should I scout ahead?”

Stone still sat on the rail, scanning the horizon. “I didn’t see anything up there. And if they followed us, we don’t want anybody in the air to give away our location.”

Jade told Balm, “Wait till we get past the islands.”

Magrim turned to go to the steering lever and get the boat moving. Chime, chafing Rorra’s wrist, said, “I wish we had some tea to give her.”

“I’m all right.” Rorra’s voice was still a harsh croak, but she was only shivering a little now, and her color was better. “I need to tell you what I saw. Stone says it’s important.”

Jade stepped over and sat down on the deck next to Moon. “Tell us.”

The boat swayed as Magrim turned it. Rorra took a deep breath. “Stone put me down in the water some distance from where we believed the Fell were. I swam for perhaps two hours before I found them. As we thought, they had forced the gleaners to build a platform for them. It was large, nearly as big as our ship, with the dome shelters atop it. There was a great deal of floating debris around it, some plant matter and also pieces of what I thought must be gleaners’ corpses, and bits of the platform itself, as if parts of it had collapsed at some point.” She pulled her shirt more tightly around her. “They didn’t see me. I can see through water to the surface, better than most beings. My eyes are designed for it. I floated just slightly under the surface with the flotsam and watched them. Dakti were perched on top, perhaps keeping watch, about thirty or so of them. I saw one kethel, sleeping on an open section of the platform. Perhaps smaller than those that attacked last night.”

She coughed and Kalam handed her a water flask. After a drink, she continued, “I watched for some time. I was hoping to see more kethel, or something to tell me how many there were. Then finally three Fell came out onto the platform where the kethel slept. I described them to Stone later and he said two were rulers in groundling form.” She looked at Moon. “They looked like you, but their skin was very pale, with no color to it at all. And their hair was . . .” She made a helpless gesture. “Different. I might have mistaken them for Raksura, if I hadn’t seen Raksura before.”

Moon nodded grimly. Chime muttered, “We get that a lot.”

Rorra continued, “I didn’t have a good angle of view, but they seemed smaller, about Root’s size. The third being was larger, female, with scales that were dark like yours, and wings, but the textures were different. Her head had a heavy crest like the rulers, but she also had those things.” She pointed to Jade’s back. “She spoke to the rulers, though of course I could hear nothing. Several dakti came out to listen too. She . . . patted one on the head.”

River made a noise of disgust.

“Then the kethel woke, and slid into the water suddenly. I was afraid . . .” She hesitated. “Terrified, actually, that they had sensed me somehow and sent it after me. I stopped resisting the current and let it carry me away from the platform, until I thought I was far enough away. Then I swam back to where Stone was waiting for me.”

There was silence for a moment. Moon bit his lip, and said finally, “It could have been a half-Fell, half-Raksuran warrior.”

“Would the rulers have listened to a warrior?” Jade sat back and shook her head. “And why keep a crossbreed warrior? It would just be an inferior kind of ruler, to them.”

Stone said, “That’s what I thought. It’s got to be a ruler-queen.” Moon met his gaze and Stone looked away toward the sky again. What might be in the city was bad enough, Moon thought. This is worse.

Kalam had been quiet, listening carefully all through Rorra’s description. He said now, “You’re saying that Raksura and Fell can interbreed. Is that because you are both descended from forerunners?”

“Probably,” Moon said.

“Does Delin know about this?” Kalam asked.

“Uh . . .” Moon looked at Jade. If someone had to make the decision whether or not to reveal to the Kishan that a crossbreed Raksura might be able to open a sealed forerunner city, it wasn’t going to be him.

Jade looked tired. She said, “Yes. But I want to wait to talk about this until we return to the others.”

In Raksuran, River said, “If it’s a queen, we’re in trouble.”

It was a vast understatement. The last half-Fell half-Raksuran queen they had encountered had a queen’s ability to keep Raksura from shifting. It had taken both Jade and Pearl to kill her. Her voice dry, Jade replied in Raksuran, “Really? You think so?”

River snarled, “Somebody had to say the obvious and Root isn’t here.”

Balm snorted a laugh, and tried to turn it into a cough. Kalam said, uncertainly, “What are you saying?”

“We’re talking about how much trouble we’re in,” Moon said.

Chime’s expression was drawn in thought. “So are these two different flights then? And not one flight nesting in two places? And if they are, which one attacked us last night?”

“Good questions,” Jade said. She pushed to her feet and faced the bow, every line of her body radiating impatience. “We need to get back.”