Chime looked at Flower, his jaw set stubbornly. “Pearl can’t ignore this. She’ll have to admit that the Fell are too dangerous to ally with.”
“She doesn’t have to admit anything. That’s the problem,” Flower said with irony. She glanced at Moon, who thought he was keeping his expression noncommittal. She smiled in apology and explained, “Pearl is our reigning queen. She allowed the Fell to enter the colony to ‘negotiate.’”
“How many Fell?” Moon asked cautiously.
Bell settled on a mat next to Flower, saying ruefully, “It was only one ruler and two minor dakti. We didn’t really get a close look at them.”
Moon nodded, folding another square of bread around several syrupy root slices. “It always starts with one.”
Chime, who picked at the fruit with a depressed expression, looked up, frowning. “What do you mean?”
Moon managed to swallow a large bite without choking himself. “When they take groundling cities.”
Everyone absorbed that in worried silence. Petal wrapped her arms around her knees as if she were cold. “I wonder if Pearl realizes that.”
“She does.” Flower’s mouth was a grim line, as if the yellow fruit she was slicing presented some desperate problem. “Our histories have chronicled the Fell’s advances in the larger groundling capitals around the Crescent Sea, and in the Star Isles. Some of the mentors of the last generation made a study of it.”
Bell asked Moon, “You lived with groundlings?”
Moon just answered with a combination shrug and nod. He realized he was still having trouble getting his mind around the fact that these people knew what he was.
Flower wasn’t deterred by his failure to answer. She passed the new plate of fruit to the newcomers in the back and asked Moon, “What court did you come from? I know you were living alone, but where were you born?”
Moon hesitated over that. He could lie, but if he did, this was going to turn into that conversation, the one where he was asked ordinary, innocuous questions he had no way to answer. Pretending to be a groundling had trapped him into it time after time. And it would be for nothing, if anybody bothered to ask Stone. “I don’t know.”
Flower lifted her brows at that, started to speak, then hesitated. Puzzled, Chime asked, “Were you living near the Star Aster Court?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure where it is.” Moon decided to get it over with and admitted, “I hadn’t seen another Raksura in a long time.”
Petal frowned doubtfully. “How long?”
Moon shrugged. “About thirty-five turns. I think.”
Flower watched him with a particular concentration. Bell and Chime stared at Moon, then at each other. Petal shook her head slightly, almost in disbelief, and said, “But you must have been a fledgling, then.”
Moon shrugged again, trying to think of a way to change the subject. Saying, Hey, do you think a Fell flight will show up in the next few days? might do it.
“But why?” Chime asked. He made a vague gesture, taking in the room, the group of teachers and mentors. “Why avoid other Raksura?”
Moon couldn’t help betraying a little exasperation. After all, he had looked for these people for at least fifteen damn turns before giving up. “I wasn’t avoiding anybody. I didn’t know where I came from, what my people were called. My—The others died before they could tell me.”
“Who were—” Chime began, and Flower held up a hand for him to be silent. She said slowly, “I have a terrible feeling...” She wiped the fruit syrup off her hands, watching Moon. “Did Stone tell you why he wanted you to come here, to the Indigo Cloud Court?”
Moon was getting a terrible feeling too. By habit he had taken a seat near the open wall into the atrium, and no one was behind him. “He said you needed warriors to help defend the colony.”
“That’s partly true.” Chime looked dubious. “He was going to try to get the Star Aster Court to send at least a couple of clutches of warriors, but—”
Flower said deliberately, “Stone went to look for a consort. He didn’t say he had succeeded, and the two soldiers who challenged you earlier obviously didn’t realize what you were. You aren’t wearing the token that Jade sent with Stone, and it’s not easy to tell a young consort from a warrior in groundling form.”
Everybody was looking at him expectantly. Confused and wary, Moon asked, “What’s a consort?”
Now everybody was looking at him as if he had said something crazy. Petal put a hand over her mouth. Chime’s jaw dropped.
Flower bit her lip. “Yes, that’s what I was afraid of.” Hesitating, as if choosing her words carefully, she said, “A consort is a male warrior. A fertile male warrior, who can breed with a queen.”
What? Moon shook his head. “But I’m not—”
Flower nodded. “You are.”
Moon kept shaking his head. “No. How could you possibly—”
Anxiously, Chime put in, “Your scales are black. Only consorts are that color. You didn’t know? You really didn’t know that?”
I really didn’t know, Moon thought blankly. I really didn’t know a lot of things. “But Stone is—” that color. Stone who had said he had children, grandchildren.
Flower leaned forward, carefully explaining, “Stone is a consort. Or was, turns ago. Pearl, the reigning queen, is one of his line. Jade is her daughter, the only surviving queen from her last royal clutch.”
“He didn’t tell me that,” Moon managed to say. He pushed to his feet, turned, and took a couple of long strides outside to the atrium, where the grass and plants were green under the wan cloudy daylight. He shifted and jumped straight up the wall.
He caught the ledge above and climbed. Using the clinging vines and the cracks and chinks in the old stone to get up out of the atrium, he made it to the broad ledge of the next level.
He needed more of a drop to clear the side of the pyramid, so he followed the ledge around to where it hung out over the river. A woman sat there, glumly surveying the water and the hilly gardens. Her scales were a soft but vivid blue, with a silver-gray pattern overlaying them like a web. Her wings were folded, and the frills and spines behind her head formed an elaborate mane, reaching all the way down her back to her tail. They flared out as she sat up, startled.
“Sorry,” Moon muttered, and dove off the ledge.
The sky threatened rain, though the air was warm and close. Moon flew upriver a short distance, far enough to get past the terraced gardens, but still in sight of the pyramid. The river was wider here, with pools all along the banks. A small stream trickled down from the hill, turning into a waterfall where it tumbled over the rocky bank and into a pool. Its edges were overhung by trees with broad leaves longer than Moon was tall, forming drooping curtains. He landed on a flat rock that jutted up from the shallow water, and shifted back to groundling to conserve his strength.
He sat down and put his feet in the cool clear pool. This was his fault. He should have pushed Stone for more information, asked more questions, but it was another engrained habit from turns of hiding what he was. In most groundling societies he had lived in, if you asked questions, it was an invitation for others to ask questions back, necessitating more complicated lies. It was less dangerous just to listen and try to glean information that way. Idiot, he told himself again.
Tiny little fish, blue-gray to blend in with the river bottom, came to investigate his feet. They scattered as Moon climbed down the rock and waded to the waterfall. He stood under the spray, hoping it would clear his head. It didn’t, but at least it washed several days worth of dust and grime out of his skin and hair and ragged clothes.