With a groan, he climbed out of the bed and dropped to the floor. He picked up the bundle of clothes Petal had left, still debating whether or not to accept them. The fabric was dyed dark, the weaving of the shirt so fine it caught on the callous on his fingers. The pants were of a tougher and probably more durable material. A draft came up the open stair raising a chill on his groundling skin and reminding him it would be cooler here, especially at night; he decided not to be stupid.
He pulled on the shirt and pants, leaving the robe Petal had loaned him on the basket next to the bundle of his old clothes. He started to go down the steps, but hesitated in the doorway.
The scent in the air was different than it had been earlier. He couldn’t hear any casual movement, but instinct told him someone waited silently nearby, maybe more than one someone. The others who lived in this hall would be talking or sleeping or doing some task, not just watching. Stalking, Moon thought, putting a name to that change in the air. It might be the two soldiers again, back for another try at him. If he was going to be attacked, he might as well get it over with.
He went down the steps and into the apparently empty hall. To draw them out, he stopped at the pool and sat on his heels to scoop up a handful of water and drink.
Two male warriors dropped out of the shadows in the high ceiling and landed lightly on the floor not ten paces away. Moon didn’t twitch, didn’t glance up at them.
One said, “Solitary.” His voice had the extra resonance of his shifted form, rough and threatening.
Moon slid a look at him, slow and deliberate. “That’s not my name.” The first warrior was a vivid green, with a blue tone under his scales. The other was copper with a gold tone. Both were big, at least as tall and as broad as Moon’s shifted form.
The green one tilted his head with predatory intent. “I’m River and that’s Drift. We don’t care what your name is.”
Moon shook the water off his hand and pushed to his feet, making the movement casual and easy, as if they were no more threatening than a couple of noisy groundling kids. “How long were you waiting to tell me that?” He didn’t shift; they wanted a fight, and he wanted to make them work for it.
River didn’t make the mistake of trying to answer the question. He gave an amused growl. “You thought no one would notice you hiding down here with the Arbora?”
“No. I thought even you two could find me.” There was a certain freedom in not having to be unobtrusive; Moon could be as big an ass as he wanted to these two.
Drift, the copper warrior, bared his fangs in a derisive grin. “Oh, we found you. And this court doesn’t need a consort so badly that we have to take in a crazy solitary.”
Moon folded his arms, another sign he didn’t consider them a threat. “I heard you did, since Star Aster wouldn’t bother to piss on you.”
That one hit the target. Drift hissed, and River snarled, “If you want to leave here alive, then you leave tonight.”
Moon moved forward, shifting in mid-step and closing the distance between them in a sudden blur of motion. The next instant he was barely a hand span away, wings half-extended and spines flared. “Make me leave.”
Drift jerked back, but River didn’t flinch. His spines flared, but voices from the far end of the hall interrupted. A group of men and women were coming in through the passage, some of them in Arbora form. One of them said, loud enough to carry, “What are River and Drift doing here? I thought they were too good for us.”
In a hushed tone, someone else said, “And who’s that?”
Drift fell back another step. “River. Not in front of them.”
Moon didn’t move. River hissed again, low and furious, then he leapt up the nearest partition. Drift was barely a pace behind him, and they both vanished into the darkness of the ceiling near the air shafts. The Arbora watched them go, with a babble of hushed comment.
Feeling suddenly far too conspicuous, Moon shifted back to groundling and turned away. He didn’t really have anywhere else to go, so he went to the doorway on this end of the hall, descending the steps toward the teachers’ court.
He was at the bend of the stairs when he heard Stone’s voice. On impulse, he stopped just out of sight of the room below. He couldn’t see anything except glowing moss crammed into a niche on the opposite wall, but he could hear a dozen or so people, breathing, stirring uneasily.
He heard Stone say, “I’m telling you, I want to leave here.”
Sounding startled, someone said, “But you just got back.”
There was grim exasperation in Stone’s voice. “I meant the colony. Is there any one of you who won’t admit that there’s something wrong here? That there has been for the past forty turns? We’ve had dead clutches, fewer births —”
“But that just happens—” another voice protested.
“That doesn’t just happen,” Stone snapped. “You’re all too young to remember how it should be. We’re a strong court with good bloodlines. We should have as many Aeriat as we have Arbora, and enough consorts that each sister queen could take three or four and go off to build her own court. That’s what they’re doing at Star Aster. Why do you think none of them would come with me?”
Someone said, “If their mentors told them this place was ill-omened, they were—”
“Pearl’s thinking of treating with the Fell,” Chime pointed out, his voice dry. “I’d call that ill-omened.”
Flower spoke, and she just sounded tired. “Stone, I’ve looked and looked. All the mentors have looked, alone and in concert. We can’t find anything wrong, no matter what we try.”
There was a pause, and Stone prompted, “And?”
“And I think it means that whatever it is... is hidden very carefully,” she admitted.
There was an uneasy murmur from the others. Petal said, “There’s nothing wrong with your augury; we know that.”
A new voice, male, low and rough, said, “Speaking for the soldiers, I’m not against leaving. Whether it’s some kind of bad omen working here or not, this place hasn’t been good for us for a long time. But what is Pearl going to say?”
“The fact that we’re having this talk without her says a lot, doesn’t it?” Chime said uneasily.
Stone didn’t seem disturbed by the objection. “I’ll handle Pearl.”
Flower sighed. “I know you want her to give way to Jade. I do, too. But Jade has to take that responsibility for herself. You can’t do it for her.”
There was another uncomfortable pause. The man who had said he spoke for the soldiers broke it with, “I think we all agree that if Jade takes the court, it would be a good thing. But not with a consort we don’t know.”
There was an edge to Stone’s voice. “What exactly did you think I was going to Star Aster for, Knell?”
Knell replied, “He’s not from Star Aster. He’s a wild solitary you picked up along the way.”
Petal’s voice was pointed. “If he was wild, he wouldn’t have been living with groundlings; he would have been eating them—”
“How do we know he wasn’t?” Knell said. “Besides, living with groundlings isn’t exactly a point in his favor either—”
Flower cut him off sharply. “Knell, the mentors and teachers in this room have spoken to him. You haven’t. You may want to reserve your opinion until you have something to base it on.”
There was another glum pause. Then Chime said, “And how do you know Pearl isn’t going to want him herself? I mean, he’s beautiful, and if she takes a new consort—”
Stone interrupted, “She’s three times his age, and she’s not so lost to sense that she’d try to take a young consort against his will.”