She stopped a few paces away, then dropped to a crouch to get eye level with him. Four dakti hunkered on the deck nearby, apparently to listen. She said, “What happened to you?”
Under the circumstances, it was a reasonable question. Moon said, “It’s a poison. If you eat anyone on board this boat, it will kill you.” The poison dulled all his physical reactions, so his frantically pounding heart and the tightness in his breathing was like something that was happening to someone else.
“We weren’t going to eat anyone anyway. We’re not like that.” She tilted her head a little. “Why . . . Why?”
Moon pushed back against the wall, slowly, using it to keep him from slumping over on the deck. “Why are we poisoned?”
“Yes, why?”
Moon couldn’t think of a reason to lie. The more she understood about the poison, the better. “The groundlings who came in the flying boat gave it to everyone.”
She took that in. “They are fighting you over the city?”
“Yes.” He wasn’t going to give more detail than that.
She said, “We were fighting over the city. We made the other flight leave. They attacked the groundlings near the city, and you killed most of their kethel. You saw that.” She waited for a response, and when Moon said nothing, continued, “They hate us, because we’re not like them. We were supposed to help them. But we changed our minds.”
Moon wanted to keep her talking. “Why?”
“We saw you.” She tilted her head. “Are you a consort?”
He thought about saying no. But she had seen him in his scaled form on the city’s dock, and this might be a test to see if he would lie to her. “Yes.”
“Our father was a consort. He told us some things but not enough.” She lifted her shoulders, looking toward the water. “We followed the waterlings from the city to find you. That was smart, wasn’t it?”
He needed to change the subject, get her away from thinking about consorts. “Why were you at the city?”
“The other flight. We were with the other flight. They said there was a weapon inside. They heard it from some groundlings, in a groundling place.” She twitched, lifting her shoulders again as if settling the wings she didn’t have in this form. “They take a groundling, take their mind, and put a ruler inside, and then the groundling tells them whatever it knows—”
“I know about that.”
She twitched again. “That flight had heard from other flights that there are good things in old cities, but you need groundlings to get inside. But the other flight might have been lying. They didn’t say Raksura would be there.”
Moon debated the wisdom of arguing with her, but if he was only delaying the inevitable with this conversation, he would rather she killed him outright. “You’re lying.”
Her white brows drew together and she dropped her gaze.
“You split from the other flight before you saw us. You captured some gleaners and forced them to build you a floating hive, then you ate them. You’re not different from the other Fell.”
Instead of getting angry, she looked away, her gaze moving along the boat’s deck. “They weren’t groundlings. We don’t eat groundlings.”
“They were people. And you’re still lying.”
She recoiled, still refusing to meet his gaze. “No one told me they were like groundlings! It’s hard! I don’t know what to do!” The dakti hissed at her. She hissed back, but grudgingly calmed herself. She added, as if determined to make sure everyone understood her rebuttal, “No one told me.”
It struck Moon, suddenly and horribly, how much this was like a conversation with stubborn fledglings. “How old are you?”
She looked at the dakti again. Then turned back to Moon as if one of them had answered some unspoken question. “Twenty turns.”
Twenty turns was barely old enough for an Aeriat to leave the nurseries. But she was still lying. “You know how to tell the difference between animals and people.”
She shook her head, but said, “We did break from the other flight, but it was earlier, back on land. We followed them here but we didn’t fight them until we saw you.” She tossed her head, clearly upset. “So it was partly not lying. They said we were a mistake. It was a mistake to make us. They said it didn’t work, they didn’t need us anymore.” The dakti all hissed in sad chorus.
Moon couldn’t believe this. The equivalent of an Aeriat fledgling was in apparently complete command of a Fell flight. “You’re all part Raksura.”
“No.” She looked up at the kethel. “Several.”
So there were some Fell still with them. “The ones who aren’t part Raksura obey you.”
“I killed the progenitor.” She ducked her head, shy and proud. “They like me better. I know to do things. We stole the other flying boat, the little one on the island, while the other flight’s kethel was tearing apart the big one and getting killed. The dakti made it work, and we used it to follow the waterlings who were following you.” She waited, as if hoping Moon would compliment this strategy.
“Tell him,” a soft, deep voice said. “If you wait longer, it’s worse.”
Moon flinched, staring. It was one of the dakti who had spoken. It said again, “Tell him.” It wasn’t a ruler speaking through it. Its lips were moving; it was speaking with its own voice.
She told it, “Maybe not. Maybe later.” She jerked her head toward Moon. “He’s sick now.”
The dakti had to be part Raksura too, even though it didn’t look like it. Moon had seen rulers show intense emotion when another ruler was killed, but he had never seen one treat a dakti as anything other than something to use and discard, never seen dakti seem to care about each other. Moon said, “Tell me what?”
The Fell queen stirred uneasily. The dakti said again, “It will be worse later.” The other two hissed in agreement.
She looked down at her curled toes, and said reluctantly, “One of the others is dead.”
The others. Moon went cold. But maybe she meant . . . “One of the other groundlings.”
“No. Other Raksura.”
No. Not that. Terror made Moon’s voice come out as a rasp, “You killed them.”
“No!” She held up her hands, flexed as if her claws were still there. “No. Tilen saw Raksura through the glass, all sleeping. He wanted to see closer and climbed inside. He saw one was dead and went out again and told me.”
“It’s true,” the dakti said.
Moon couldn’t think. It’s a mistake. It’s not true. But Vendoin had said I never meant for any of you to be harmed. He had thought she meant Magrim and maybe some of the other Kishan. He said, “Show me.”
River slipped back down the stairs, took Rorra’s arm, and hauled her into the cabin, hissing at her to be quiet when she tried to speak. He put her down and dropped the boots beside her, staying in a crouch to keep out of view of anything flying past the window. His heart pounded with terror, the pulse beat in his ears so loud it interfered with his hearing. It took effort to keep his voice even. “The Fell are here.”
Her eyes widened. “I thought—I heard the shouts and hoped the Raksura had woken and were fighting the Hians.”
River moved his spines in a negative, keeping part of his attention on the window. A kethel circled in the distance but no dakti climbed past the opening. He didn’t know why he was telling this to a sealing, as if she could help, but without her he was completely alone. “The Fell killed some of the Hians, but others got away. I saw them from the windows in the steering cabin.” He had watched as best he could while scrunching his body into the back corner of the cabin, trying to blend with the wall so the Fell didn’t see him through one of the big windows. He was still alive so he assumed they hadn’t spotted him. The Fell’s arrival had ruined his partially formed plan of following the flying boat until he could free the prisoners or report back to Jade where they had been taken. “The Hians took Bramble and Merit and Delin away with them.”