“So let’s stop talking about it,” Jade said, with a brief glare at Stone. “I think I should meet with these groundlings. I was at the forerunner city, and I can tell them what I saw with my own eyes. Maybe that will convince them to be cautious, at least.” She rolled her spines to ease the tension in them. “And if you’re right and they do want to ask us to come with them . . . We’ll worry about it when it happens.”
Pearl’s spines were beginning to ease back down, mostly because she didn’t like groundlings, so anything that kept her from having to talk to more of them was a relief for her. She said, grudgingly, “That’s a possibility.”
Moon hesitated, but they had to talk about this, and he might as well get it started now. He said, “What about the Fell? The shared dream?”
The room went silent. Pearl said, “The dream can’t mean these Fell. If they encounter a creature like the one in the other forerunner city, it will destroy them, like it did the others.”
Moon wasn’t willing to bet anyone’s life on that. “If this is a forerunner city, and there is something waiting in it, it might give these Fell what it promised the others. Weapons to let them destroy groundling cities and eat wherever they want.” Moon was talking to Pearl but all his attention was on Jade. He couldn’t tell what her reaction was. She had her opaque diplomatic face on, which was almost as hard to read as Stone’s normal expression. “That may be what causes them to come here.”
Heart stirred uneasily. Floret said, “We don’t know that they’ll come here. There’s been nothing in the augury. The dream . . . It might have been a warning for the courts still in the east.”
“Some of them were our allies,” Chime put in. “We have to warn them.”
“But we don’t like them anymore.” Stone’s ironic tone was like acid.
“And the Fell would never come here,” Moon said, “because there’s nothing they’ve ever wanted from us.”
Everyone heard the sarcasm in that.
Pearl’s expression was withering. “I know what the risk is as well as you.”
Moon just met her gaze. He knew she did, he just wanted her to say it aloud.
Breaking the tension, Jade said, “Let me speak to the groundlings. Maybe they can tell us more about what they saw.”
Balm added, “We don’t even know that this is a forerunner city yet. Maybe the Fell are mistaken, or it’s only a coincidence that they’re nearby.”
Chime made a dubious noise and Balm elbowed him. Everyone else had recognized Jade and Balm’s joint effort to stop the discussion before it got into an area which would end with a lot of yelling and hissing and growling.
Pearl stood and settled her wings. “Arrange the meeting with the groundlings for tomorrow. It’s too late to do it tonight. And do not let them know where the court is—have it somewhere else.”
Jade flicked her spines in agreement. “I will.”
Pearl stood and in one bound reached the passage back to the greeting hall, the displaced air from her wing flick almost overturning the tea cups. Floret nodded to Jade and shifted to hurry after her.
Everyone except Stone let out a breath of relief.
Delin said, “I am sorry to cause this dissension among you.”
Moon told him, “It was going to happen sooner or later.”
As Jade turned to Balm, Stone said, “I need to talk to you,” grabbed Moon’s arm, and dragged him upright.
Moon followed him down a stairwell and through a twisting passage into someone’s bower. No one was there at the moment, but Raksura didn’t have strong feelings about privacy and Arbora and warriors slept in each other’s bowers all the time. Whoever it belonged to probably wouldn’t mind the line-grandfather and the first consort having a fight in it, as long as nobody broke anything.
As Stone turned to face him, Moon said, “If you hit me, I’ll bite your face off.”
Stone ignored the threat, probably because he didn’t feel very threatened by it. “What do you think we’re going to do? Follow the groundlings to this city and drive off the Fell?”
Moon hadn’t been expecting Stone to cut through to the heart of the situation that way, and it silenced any retorts he had ready. He didn’t want to go to some far-off place to fight Fell. He didn’t want to leave his clutch. But that didn’t change the situation. “We can’t just ignore this.” He didn’t know what Jade would want, or how she felt about this. Or how angry she would be at the idea. “What if there is something in there that gives the Fell what the other one promised them?”
Stone groaned and rubbed his face tiredly. “Good question.”
That was the point when Moon understood that Stone had dragged him down here not to yell at him, but so they could decide what to do. That wasn’t reassuring, since he had been hoping Stone already knew what they should do. One thing Moon had figured out since joining the court was that being the one who pointed out what things were wrong was relatively easy compared to being the one who had to decide what to do about them.
Moon turned away, pacing absently until he reached the bowl hearth. The stones in it were only giving off a faint warmth and needed to be renewed. “If this isn’t a forerunner city and the Fell just think it is for some reason, then . . . But how else would they know about it?” The being in the other city had drawn the Fell to itself through turns of effort, with a mental call that Raksura couldn’t hear.
“The Fell could have heard about the city in Kish,” Stone said.
Moon turned to frown at him. “You mean, Fell rulers in Kish? I thought they couldn’t get into the cities because of the Kish shamen.” Like Delin had mentioned, Kish shamen had special magic that allowed them to spot Fell rulers, and it also made the shamen immune to the Fell’s ability to confuse and deceive. Moon had always believed it was the main reason why the Fell avoided Kish territory, not fear of the Kishan weapons.
“Not rulers.” Stone lifted his brows at Moon’s expression. “What? You know they can make groundlings do whatever they want. You think they’ve never caught some groundlings and sent them into Kish to spy?”
That was a thought. Fell could plant suggestions in groundling minds, make them forget they had ever encountered Fell in the first place, make them remember events that had never happened. If they could send a groundling into a place to see and hear things, and come back to the Fell to report, it would avoid the shamen altogether. The groundlings wouldn’t even know they were spies, and the Fell would probably eat them when they were done with them, destroying any evidence. “So if one of the scholars involved talked about this map where others could hear, and the Fell found out about it, they could find a groundling who could get close to the explorers—”
“Who could still be with them.” Jade leaned in the bower’s doorway.
Moon twitched in automatic guilt. He supposed it was unlikely that his and Stone’s sudden exit had gone unnoticed. Jade spotted the guilt and demanded, “What? What are you planning?”
“Nothing,” Moon said. He added honestly, “Yet.”
She sighed and stepped into the bower. “I suppose you both realize we have to send someone to that city to see what’s really going on.”
It was a relief that Jade was willing to admit it, too. Moon felt some of the tension drain out of his chest. He didn’t want to go against Jade on this.
Stone said pointedly, “We realize it, and you realize it. Will Pearl realize it?”
Jade didn’t answer that. She eyed Moon critically. “You shouldn’t have confronted her in front of Delin. You know how she is about groundlings.”
She was probably right about that. But it had felt like everyone was ignoring the important point. And if you were going to challenge Pearl on something like this, it was better to get it over with as quickly as possible. He said, earnestly, “I thought she liked it when I confront her.”