The Serpent Sea

Chapter Eighteen

Moon stepped into the room where Flower had died. The vaporlights were dimming, issuing only a little glowing mist, and the room was thick with shadows. Her body still lay on the bed, wrapped in silky sheets. It made an absurdly small bundle. He made himself look away, to the corner where Balm and Chime sat.

Chime huddled half in Balm’s lap, and she stroked his hair. Moon went to kneel beside them and put a hand on Chime’s back. “We have to leave. We’re going to the flying ship in the harbor.”

Balm lifted her brows. “Now? Isn’t it still daylight?”

“We have a deal with the magister who’s taking Ardan’s place.” At her expression, he added, “I know, but we’re hoping this one works out better.”

Chime took a sharp breath and sat up. He looked sick, exhausted. “What about her body? Do we have to leave her here? We should hide her, so they don’t—”

“No, we’re going to take her.” Jade had decided to take the queen’s funerary urn from Ardan’s collection for the purpose. It was big enough to hold a small Arbora body, once the current occupant was removed. Moon was going to let Stone handle that part.

“Oh.” Chime nodded, swallowed, and made to get up.

The groundlings hadn’t had many personal possessions with them, just clothing and a few things Ardan had allowed them to bring from their ship. They went up to quickly gather what they needed, and the Raksura spent the time raiding the tower’s kitchens and food stores, taking everything that could be easily transported and stuffed into bags. “There’s no meat,” Drift complained at one point as he turned out the contents of a cabinet.

“You’ll eat bread and dried fish and like it,” Balm told him, in the tone of someone on her last nerve.

Once that was done, both groups assembled in the exhibit hall, in the passage to the outer door. Moon had wondered if Negal’s people would take the opportunity to loot Ardan’s belongings, as compensation for their imprisonment. It didn’t look like they had; the packs they carried were all stuffed with bags from the tower’s dry food stores. Maybe they didn’t want any reminders, or maybe their isolated land valued different things. All Negal had was a shoulder bag stuffed with paper, perhaps writing done while he was trapped here.

“You haven’t changed your mind?” Jade asked Negal. She had the seed, carefully wrapped in Flower’s old pack, securely fastened between her wing join and her shoulder. Vine, the largest male warrior, had shouldered the big pack that contained the urn. It was a heavy burden, more than four paces tall and two wide, but Stone was going to be too occupied to carry it.

Negal glanced back at the others. All of them except Karsis and Esom watched the Raksura with suspicion. They kept looking at Rift and then looking away. Negal had said they wouldn’t want to be carried through the air, an attitude that Moon could understand given their experiences with Rift. But that wasn’t going to make getting to the port any safer. “Unfortunately not,” Negal said, a little wryly. “Though we are certain it would be a unique experience.”

“I hope your walk to the harbor doesn’t turn out to be a unique experience,” Jade said, and nodded for Stone to go ahead.

Stone pushed open the doors and stepped out into the daylight. He shifted and his dark form blocked the doorway for a heartbeat. There was a chorus of gasps and startled flinches from the groundlings who hadn’t seen him before. Then he sprang into the air so fast he seemed to vanish.

Moon followed Jade to the doorway, the warriors behind them. The plaza looked empty from here, but Stone circled overhead to scan for ambushes or hidden traps. He tipped a wing to show it was clear.

Turning back to Negal, Jade said, “Follow us. We’ll make certain your route is safe.”

Negal gripped his bag and said, “We will.”

Jade stepped out and leapt into flight; Moon and the warriors followed her. As soon as they were above the surrounding buildings, the wind hit them like a hammer. The warriors dropped back low over the rooftops, but Moon fought it, tried to ride it without being slammed into anything, until he caught Jade’s signal. Then he angled off and made for the harbor.

Jade and the others would stay with the groundlings, following them roof to roof to make sure they weren’t attacked on the way through the city. They had decided that Moon and Stone would fly ahead to the ship to see if there were guards or magisters lurking aboard.

Buffeted by the wind, Moon saw mostly empty streets below, with only a few moving figures. He had to circle around to hit the harbor, but saw it was almost deserted too, the big slips for the trading vessels empty, the small fishing boats swinging in their raised cradles. The Klodifore was still there, tied to its pier, suspended several paces above the water. The leviathan’s motion was causing the water in the harbor to churn, kicking up huge fountains of spray along the piers.

Stone circled overhead, and as Moon dropped down for a landing on the roof of the ship’s top steering cabin, he turned and dipped down toward the water, abruptly vanishing behind the fishing fleet’s cradles. I hope he knows what he’s doing, Moon thought.

He crouched on the edge of the cabin roof, the wind tearing at his frills. A door on the lowest deck opened and three groundlings hurriedly exited to climb carefully down the narrow ramp that connected the ship to the pier. Those must be Ardan’s men, the ones who had been taught to make the ship lift itself out of the water when the leviathan moved. Moon glanced across to the docks. A small group of groundlings waited in the shelter of one of the rickety buildings, as far away from the churning water as possible. One was Magister Lethen.

So far so good. Moon climbed down to the deck just below, found a door, and stepped inside.

To be out of the wet wind was a relief. He flicked his spines, shaking off the spray, and tasted the air. He caught a scent of nervous groundling, but it was fading fast, probably from the men who had just left.

Still, he searched the ship quickly, looking into every room and cubby, but found no one hiding aboard. He came back out onto the main deck in time to see Jade and the warriors above the harbor, about to make the difficult aerial approach to the boat. Negal, Karsis, Esom, and the other groundlings were just coming down the steps onto the dock.

Lethen and his men moved out from the shelter to meet them. Moon jumped down to the pier. From this angle he could see the bottom of the Klodifore, its hull hovering a few paces above the swirling water. Waves rushed continuously over the pier and made the walk along it wet and dangerous. Moon reached the dock just as Negal and the others reached Lethen.

“You have it?” Lethen demanded, raising his voice to a bellow to be heard over the wind and water. The men with him weren’t all armed guards, and they weren’t all blue-pearls; a few members of the other two dominant groundling races were present, the golden-skinned and darkskinned people. Some were dressed richly enough to be other magisters or prominent traders. A few wore working clothes.

Negal looked at Moon, who shifted to groundling, to startled exclamations from Lethen’s companions. He took the bridle out of his pack and said, “Let them go to the ship, and I’ll give it to you.”

Lethen glared, frowned suspiciously at the bridle, then said, “Very well.”

Negal threw Moon a guarded look and led his people past. This was their most vulnerable moment, but somehow Moon didn’t think even a magister would have brought this diverse group out to see him betray the Raksura.

Moon waited until the groundlings had made the uneasy trek down the pier and were crossing the little walkway up to the ship. Jade and the warriors had already landed on the upper deck and were watching intently. Then he handed the bridle to Lethen.

The Magister turned it over, examined it carefully, rubbed at the crystals with his thumb. Then he grunted, and asked Moon, “Will you need assistance casting off?”

In other words, go away and don’t come back. That suited Moon. He said, “No, thank you.”

He turned his back on them and went to the edge of the dock, then shifted and reached the Klodifore’s lower deck in two long bounds.

The groundlings were all aboard, gathered on the deck. “Thank you,” Negal said to Moon. His voice shook a little, though he kept his expression calm. He looked back at the city, the towers rising on the leviathan’s flanks. “I never thought we would leave this place.”

“We’re not gone yet.” Captain Damison was still grim. “We’ll need help to cast off. They’ve still got us tied to the—”

The deck jerked as the forward cable snapped. Moon said, “It’s all right.”

With a tremendous splash, Stone slung his big body up onto the pier, making the wood groan. He snapped the stern cable between his claws, then shifted to groundling. Rolling to his feet, he wrung out his shirt and crossed the walkway onto the deck.

Damison shouted orders in his own language and strode away toward the nearest hatch. Two men scrambled to cut the walkway loose, while the others bolted along the deck. Negal followed Damison, and Esom and Orlis hurried inside to clatter down the first stairwell into the bowels of the ship. Karsis stood with Moon and Stone.

Drifting loose, the ship was already moving over the pier. Or the pier was moving under the ship as the leviathan pushed forward. Moon felt a tremor through the metal deck underfoot, and there was an answering rumble from somewhere deep in the hull. Then the ship rose a little higher and jolted into motion.

Moon swayed and Karsis caught the rail to steady herself as the Klodifore pulled rapidly away and turned to head for open water. As they came about, Stone muttered, “Uh oh.” They were nearing the giant ridge of the leviathan’s leg, which pumped rhythmically as the creature swam, water swirling in a dangerous whirlpool around it.

That could be a problem, Moon thought, glancing up to where Jade and the other Raksura climbed down from the top deck. If the ship was struck, the Raksura could get into the air, but the ship would be sucked under before they could get the groundlings out. And then the Raksura would be trapped out here. As aware of the danger as he was, Karsis leaned forward on the railing and said grimly, “We can make it. I know we can make it.”

The big chimneys atop the ship belched white smoke, then it suddenly surged forward. The thrashing leg fell behind them and they angled sharply away. The city passed them rapidly, the creature’s mountainous body moving forward with powerful strokes of its legs and tail.

Moon let out his breath in relief and shifted to groundling. They were going to miss the tail by a good distance. The wind fell away with the sound of the churning water. The sun was moving toward evening and then there was only the ship chugging along, a few paces above the gentle waves.

Karsis slumped, and her expression revealed relief and all the raw emotion she had been holding in check for all the months of her captivity. “I didn’t think we’d ever get away.”

“I didn’t either, and we were only there for four days,” Stone told her.

“It was a long four days,” Moon admitted. Jade swung under the railing on the deck above and dropped down next to him. The others were all lined up there, watching the mountainous leviathan grow slowly smaller in the distance. The ship turned and Moon could feel they were heading east, as promised, back to the coast of the forest Reaches.

Karsis pushed her hair back, her voice thick, as she got herself under control again. “If there’s anything else we can do for you…”

“Show us a place where we can sleep,” Jade said.

Karsis showed them to two small cabins, side by side, on the first deck above the water. Moon suspected they might have belonged to her and Esom, but he was too tired to care where the groundlings were going to sleep. Jade claimed the narrow bed in the first room, then divided the warriors up and made certain they would take turns on watch, just in case any groundlings decided to kill them. Moon was only dimly aware of most of that, since Jade had claimed the bed by dumping him in it, and as soon as his body was horizontal he had started to fall asleep.

He woke much later, with Jade in her Arbora form warm and heavy on top of him, her head pillowed on his chest, a knee pushed between his thighs. The room smelled of Raksura in groundling form who needed to bathe and wash their clothes. He was aware that the sun was now rising over the sea, that they had slept from the late afternoon through the night. Flower’s dead, he remembered suddenly, with a spark of pain that brought him fully alert.

He could feel the ship still heading east, pulling a little toward the south, but that was probably the wind. The Klodifore vibrated in a way that the Valendera hadn’t, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Soon they would be close enough to the coast to fly the rest of the way. There was something he needed to take care of first.

He nudged Jade gently, and she tightened her hold on him. “I have to get up,” he whispered, and tugged on one of her head frills. She hummed low in her throat and rolled onto her side without really waking. He sat up and then had to spend a moment just looking at her. You’re lucky, he told himself. He didn’t think there were many young sister queens who would have willingly shouldered this responsibility, or who would have let their consorts take the risks he had. I hope we’re done with that now. He was more than willing to get back to the colony and try living the normal Raksuran way.

Moon climbed out of the bunk and picked his way across the floor, where Chime, Balm, Song, and Vine were curled up on the spare cushions and blankets they had found in a cabinet. He opened the door quietly and stepped out into the corridor.

Floret sat on a cushion on the floor, leaning back against the wall. “Are you hungry?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “We saved you some food.”

“Not yet.” Moon sat on his heels and glanced through the partly open doorway of the other room. Stone was sprawled in the bed, with River, Drift, and Root in a comfortable pile on one side of the room, and Rift on the other. “Has Rift tried to leave?”

“No. Everyone’s been quiet.” Floret sat forward, stretching her back. “Most of us woke up in the middle of the night to eat. The dried fish wasn’t as bad as Drift said it was. Karsis and the older one, the leader, came by once to see if we needed anything, but that’s it.”

“Good.” Moon pushed to his feet. “I’ll be back.”

The ship was quiet, but Moon could smell cooking odors, some kind of grain porridge. He followed the scent down a corridor and then a set of stairs, to a sitting area. There were couches against the walls, and Esom sat on one reading a leather-bound book. He was dressed in fresh clothes, and had replaced his broken spectacles with a different set. In the far wall was an open doorway leading to the room with the big metal stove and the storage for dishes and food supplies. A couple of crewmen were in there, eating at the table.

Esom looked up, blinking, startled out of deep concentration. “Oh, hello, Moon.”

Moon pulled a padded stool closer and sat down, facing Esom. “Can I talk to you?”

“Yes. Is something wrong?”

Moon couldn’t think of any way to ease up on the subject. He asked, “Did you kill Ardan?”

“What? No. What?” Startled, Esom closed the book and sat up. “I thought you said he fell and hit his head when the leviathan moved?”

“He might have. But the way he fell, it would make more sense if someone hit him from behind.” The men at the table in the next room had stopped eating, and watched them with a mix of suspicion and curiosity. They were a little too far away to hear the conversation.

“It wasn’t me.” Esom seemed earnest and baffled. “Stone left me on the west side of the chamber. I was trying to work my way over to the door to the tunnel, but with the water and the angle of the floor, it was slow going. I kept sliding down and ramming into the pillars. I’d just gotten within sight of the door when Stone came back for me.”

That sounded true, unfortunately. “I was hoping it was you.” Esom had plenty of reason to hate Ardan, and his friends had still been trapped back in the tower; he might have seen it as the best opportunity to free them.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I see what you mean.” Esom looked thoughtful. “If not me, then who? Do you think it was one of his own men? I don’t think most of them knew he was in control of the leviathan. They may have suspected it, but…”

“But it doesn’t make much sense.”

“No,” Esom admitted. He leaned forward, struck by a sudden thought. “Unless one of them secretly worked for Magister Lethen.”

“Maybe,” Moon said, and let Esom talk about it until he could pretend to be convinced. He was fairly certain he knew who had killed Ardan, but he didn’t want to be on this ship when he confronted the guilty party.

Since they were getting along with the groundlings, they spent another day and a night resting on the Klodifore. Moon slept through most of it, though he made sure someone was always watching Rift. River and Drift became unwilling allies in this, since they distrusted Rift far more than they disliked Moon, and never hesitated to take a turn guarding him.

Moon hadn’t spoken about his suspicions to anyone but Esom. The weather was good, windy but clear. The ship stopped at one point and settled down in the water to fill its tanks directly from the freshwater sea. It was a far more convenient system than having to fill jars or buckets and haul them up the side, the way the Golden Islanders did on their boats. It meant there was plenty of bathing water, which they all took advantage of. The basins were small, but capable of producing hot water, which made up for a lot.

The rest of Negal’s crew had adjusted reluctantly to the presence of the Raksura, though they were still obviously wary. They stared at them, and asked Karsis and Esom questions, most of which they had to pass along to Moon or Chime. Or to Floret, who had spent a while talking with Karsis while waiting at the camp in the abandoned tower. The crew was especially nervous of Stone at first, but he used his uncanny ability to disarm groundling fears, which to the untrained eye involved hanging around in their cooking room and asking about their food. By the evening they were so used to him that none of them seemed to mind when he fell asleep in front of the stove in their main sitting area. Esom tried hard to talk to Chime about groundling magic, and Chime resorted to hiding in their cabin, clinging to the ceiling above the doorway where no one could see him from the corridor.

Moon didn’t think these groundlings would ever be entirely comfortable with the presence of shifters, but maybe that was for the best. He hoped that the next time they left their isolated land, they would explore in a different direction.

On the morning of the second day aboard, Stone judged they were more than close enough for the warriors to make the flight to land. Moon stood on the highest deck with Chime. It was a sunny morning, and the groundlings had brought the ship to a hovering halt to make it easier for them to take off. On the deck just below, Jade spoke with Negal, formally taking their leave. The other warriors were still inside, with Balm tasked to make sure they were all prepared for the long flight.

Chime squinted toward the east, though they were a little too far out to see the shore. After the two days of rest, Chime was at least able to pretend to be like his usual self. He still hadn’t talked about Flower yet, the way the others did, sharing good memories, but Moon thought he just needed more time. Moon nudged him with a shoulder. “Ready to get home?”

“Of course,” Chime said, but he didn’t sound ready. It might just be the flight to shore. Moon didn’t think any of the warriors were looking forward to that.

“This is going to be interesting,” Stone muttered, and leaned over the rail to gauge the distance down. His size made launching from the boat problematic.

“I could carry you up in the air and drop you,” Moon offered, and dodged the resulting slap at his head.

Jade leapt up from below and swung over the railing. Balm and the other warriors clattered out of the hatch behind them, already shifted and ready to go. The groundlings came out onto the deck below to watch.

“Ready?” Jade asked, rippling her spines to test the wind. “The weather’s perfect.”

“It’s not the weather we’re waiting for,” Moon told her.

Stone growled. “Hold on.” He took a deep breath, and climbed up onto the railing. Then he flung himself forward. He shifted in mid-fall, eliciting gasps and cries of excitement from the groundlings. He flapped hard, wingtips brushing the water before he got enough lift to rise. Then he caught the wind and soared upward.

Moon and the others followed him over the rail. Karsis and Esom waved and called goodbyes, and Moon waved back.

It was an easier flight toward the shore than away from it, and they were able to ride the wind the whole way. Moon kept an eye on Rift, making sure he didn’t drop behind and turn back while the Klodifore was still in range.

It was late evening when they landed on the shore, about midway between the Kek city and the point where they had originally camped.

It was a grass-covered beach on the edge of the great forest, perfect for a night’s camp. Stone climbed up a mountain-tree sapling to sleep on one of its big branches, while the warriors stretched and got ready to go hunting. Back on the Klodifore, they had decided to send Stone ahead with the seed and the urn. The Emerald Twilight mentors had given them instructions for trying to re-attach the seed, and the process sounded like it would take at least a few days. His ordinary pace was twice as fast as even Moon and Jade could fly, and he could get the seed back to the colony tree much faster alone. They were all going to have a big meal and sleep here tonight, then take off at dawn.

As the warriors broke up into hunting parties, Vine jerked his head toward Rift. “Do we still need to watch him? I mean, aren’t we going to just let him go?” He looked from Jade to Moon, a little worried. “Or were we going to let him stay with us?” Rift was out of earshot, standing in the shadow of the trees, looking into the forest.

Jade lifted a brow at Moon, who said, “We’re going to let him go. I’ll take care of it.”

Jade cocked her head, a little surprised. “You weren’t—” She had clearly assumed Moon would want to at least ask Rift to stay. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. It’s all right.” He touched her hand in reassurance, and walked across the soft grass, into the forest shadow where Rift waited.

Rift glanced at Moon, and flattened his spines in deference. He said, “It’s good to be back.”

Moon didn’t see any reason to waste time. He said, “Why did you kill Ardan?”

Rift’s spines flicked, and he turned to face Moon. He shook his head, as if flustered. “Why do you think it was me? You said he was hit on the head. That’s the way a groundling kills, not the way we do it.”

Moon thought, So he did do it. He had been nearly certain, though there had been a slight chance that Esom’s spy theory was true. But Rift had formulated that objection too fast for an innocent person, as if he had already thought about what he would say if he was accused. “Esom was the only groundling nearby, and he says it wasn’t him. It could have been one of Ardan’s men, who managed not to get washed away by the flood, but I don’t think so.” He watched Rift thoughtfully. “He was hit on the head so whoever found him would think a groundling did it.”

Rift showed his teeth briefly. “And none of your friends are smart enough to think of that?”

“None of my friends would have bothered to hide it.” All the Indigo Cloud Raksura could have killed Ardan to protect the seed, but none of them would have thought of concealing the act. Moon shook his head. “Ardan helped you. He took care of you. You could have left when he took you back to the Reaches to look for the seed. He could have chained you up, put spells on you, but he didn’t. He didn’t need to. He’d made you his friend, and that was the only chain he thought he needed. But he didn’t really know you, did he?”

“You’re wrong. He would never have let me leave.” Rift leaned forward urgently. “He would have made me take him to steal another seed.”

“Maybe.” But something about his expression told Moon that Rift had just thought of that convenient excuse. “He wasn’t afraid of you. He had his back to you.”

Rift hissed, glaring at him. “So you’ve never killed anyone by stealth? You’ve never had to, to survive?”

Moon snorted. It was almost funny. “I killed a Fell ruler by stealth. But that was a Fell.” It had made him a target and eventually brought the Fell to Indigo Cloud, but that was beside the point. “What’s it like to kill someone who trusts you?”

Rift snarled silently and looked away, but there was something false about the emotion behind it. Moon realized at that moment what had bothered him all along about Rift. Rift had been playing a part for him, just like the groundlings who acted out plays for the festival crowds in Kish. Just like Moon had pretended to be a groundling for all those turns. You saw through him, because he’s not any better at it than you are. That story that Rift had told, about being thrown out of his court because of a fight with another warrior, had been calculated to engender sympathy. Moon hadn’t believed it at the time, and it seemed less and less likely the more he spoke to Rift.

Groundlings had always been wary of Moon because somehow they had sensed he was lying to them, even if they weren’t sure why or what about. Now he knew just what that elusive sense of wrongness felt like.

For Moon, Rift had been playing the part of a poor lonely solitary who needed help, probably just a variation on the part he had played for Ardan, but more geared toward Raksuran sensibilities. The part he had played for the guards and the crew of the Klodifore, the groundlings he had been free to terrorize, was probably a lot closer to the real Rift. With considerably less patience, Moon said, “Just tell me why you did it.”

“I’ve told you why. He wouldn’t let me go.” Rift sounded more sulky than angry.

“After you told him I was a solitary, he offered to let me stay on the leviathan, if I didn’t want to go back with the court,” Moon said. “What did you tell him, about why you left your court?”

Rift tensed up again, his spines trembling. “I didn’t tell him anything.”

“If you’d lied to him to make him feel sorry for you, that wouldn’t have mattered. I lived with groundlings; everything I did and said was a lie. But what if you told him the truth, and you couldn’t take the chance that he’d tell us.” It was a guess, but Moon saw Rift’s whole body go rigid.

Rift bared his fangs. “You’re assuming I was planning to beg to join your court. From what I’ve heard, it’s so close to dying off, they had to take a solitary as a consort.”

Moon didn’t take the bait, but it made him more certain he was on the right trail. “No, I’m assuming you want to find another group of Raksura to get close to, because you’re tired of killing groundlings.”

Rift’s expression was more amused than anything else. He said, “They’re just groundlings.”

“Arbora are just groundlings who can shift. Is that who you killed at your old court, until they figured it out?”

Rift shook his head, still amused, then lunged for Moon. Moon had been waiting for that. He ducked away from Rift’s clawed swipe, and punched him in the face hard enough to stun him. Then he caught his throat and slammed him down on his back. Low and close to his ear, Moon said, “Better stick with helpless groundlings, and leave feral consorts alone.”

Rift whimpered, such a patently false manipulation that Moon almost tore his throat out right there. Rift said, “I’ll go. You’ll never see me again.”

“If I do, you’re dead.” Moon dragged him upright and tossed him away, further into the forest. Rift tumbled into a crouch, threw one last look back, then bolted away into the trees.

Moon turned back toward the others, only just now realizing they were all gathered on the grassy beach, watching him. Even Stone had dropped back out of the tree and stood there in groundling form.

Root said, “I’m confused. I thought Rift was a nice solitary, like Moon.”

Song clapped a hand over her eyes in embarrassment. Vine told Root, “Remember how I told you you weren’t allowed to talk anymore?”

Root hissed at him, but Moon ignored all the byplay. Jade seemed concerned, and he doubted it was because of the aborted fight. She said, “Should I ask?”

Moon shrugged, rippled his spines to take the tension out of his back. “Balm was right.”

Jade looked at Balm, who shrugged too. She said, “I just said that that solitary was not like him.”

Jade flicked her spines in acknowledgement, and smiled at her. “Good.” She turned to the others. “Go now, if you want to get back before dark.”

The group reluctantly broke up. Balm took Chime’s wrist and led him away, saying, “We’ll build a fire and make tea.” Moon could see River struggling with the urge to make a comment, and the knowledge that Jade would probably not react well to it and that he was still several days away from Pearl’s protection. He finally looped an arm around Drift’s neck and hauled him away.

“Are you going to say ‘I told you so’?” Moon asked Stone. Stone rolled his eyes and turned to go back to his tree.

Jade stepped up to Moon. As he shifted to groundling, she put an arm around his waist and pulled him against her. Keeping her voice low, she said, “I know that was hard.”

He leaned his forehead against hers. It had been hard, even knowing what Rift was really like. “He wasn’t who I hoped he was.”