He was looking for somewhere to be alone, but there were more people here than he had expected. The curtains over the doorways and stairs had been lifted back, and a group of men and women at the end of the hall worked with bone spindles and distaffs, spinning masses of beaten plant fiber into yarn. Near the shallow fountain, Petal and a couple of younger Arbora played with five very active babies, all just old enough to toddle on unsteady legs.
Moon headed for his bower, hoping no one would notice him. But Petal greeted him, waving. “Moon, did you have good hunting?”
“It was all right.” Reluctantly, he stopped beside her. Before she could ask anything more, two figures, one green and one bright blue, crashed down the nearest stairway. They tumbled out onto the floor, spilling a few empty baskets and knocking over a clay jar.
Petal shouted, “Spring, Snow, stop that! What do you think is going to happen if you hurt your wings?”
It wasn’t until the two figures rolled to a halt and separated that Moon realized they were young, half-sized warriors, one male and one female, as wild and awkward as fledgling raptors. They both sat up and shifted, turning into thin and gawky children on the edge of adolescence. They stared wide-eyed at Moon, as startled to see him as he was to see them.
Petal got to her feet, eyeing them with exasperated affection. “The girl is Spring and the boy is Snow,” she told Moon. “They’re from Amber’s last clutch. She was Pearl’s sister queen.”
Amber was one of the queens who had died, Moon remembered. It seemed like he had heard about more dead Raksura than live ones. He was trying to think of a polite response when something grabbed his leg. He looked down, bemused to see one of the Arbora toddlers had shifted and was now trying to climb him like a tree. The rest of the clutch rolled on the floor in play, keeping the other teachers busy.
“Oh, Speckle, don’t.” Petal made a grab for her and the little girl ducked away agilely, still climbing.
“Speckle?” Moon caught the baby and lifted her up. She immediately sank her claws into his shirt, looking up at him with big, liquid brown eyes. Her gold-brown scales and tiny spines were still soft, and she smelled like a combination of groundling baby and Raksura. Moon’s heart twisted, and he reminded himself he planned to leave eventually.
“It almost makes sense when you know the rest of the clutch is Glint, Glimmer, Pebble, and Shell,” Petal said, prying little claws out of Moon’s sleeve as she tried to coax the baby to let go. “Most of us like to give our clutches similar names.”
“Does that mean you’re related to Flower?” Moon asked, still distracted as the baby stubbornly tightened her grip on him.
Petal laughed. “Distantly. She’s much older than I am. Chime, though, is clutch-mate to Knell and Bell. Knell is leader of the soldiers, and Bell is a teacher. The other two were mentors, but they died from the lung disease.” She hesitated, suddenly self-conscious. “Chime wasn’t always a warrior.”
“He told me he used to be a mentor.” Moon ruffled Speckle’s frills. Keeping his attention on the baby, he asked casually, “Who is Balm related to?”
“She’s a warrior from a royal clutch, the same one Jade came from.” Sighing in exasperation, Petal tried to work her fingers under Speckle’s claws. “It’s not true, what they say about female warriors who come from royal clutches. They don’t all go mad because they think they’re failed queens.” She frowned a little and added, “It’s only happened to a few.”
So Jade had sent her clutch-mate to watch him? Or just to find out more about him and report back? Moon wasn’t sure what to make of it.
The warrior girl Spring was still watching them with wide eyes. She said suddenly, “There’s only two of us. The others died.”
“Where’s your clutch?” Snow demanded, half-hiding behind her.
Moon hesitated while Speckle gnawed on his knuckles with fortunately still-blunt baby teeth. He could accept the fact that Sorrow hadn’t been his mother, and that it was impossible for a consort to come from a clutch of Arbora. But it hadn’t changed anything. “They died.”
Petal managed to pry Speckle off Moon just as Flower hurried up the stairs from the common room. “Moon, good, you’re back.” She looked flustered and worried, her gossamer hair frazzled. “Pearl has called for a gathering.”
“A gathering?” Petal looked startled, and not a little alarmed, which made Moon’s hackles rise. She flicked a quick, worried glance at him. “Everyone?”
Flower gave her a grim nod. “Except the teachers who are watching the children, the soldiers guarding the lower entrances, and the hunters too far out to call back.”
Or very fast consorts who make it up to that air shaft when no one is looking, Moon thought, preparing to fade into the crowd.
Flower fixed her gaze on Moon, as if reading his thought, and added firmly, “And you are specifically included.”
Flower wanted Moon to come with her immediately, which he suspected meant she thought he might to try to escape in the confusion. She was right, but since she had grabbed his arm and immediately towed him out of the hall to the main stairwell, there wasn’t much opportunity for an unobtrusive exit.
People hurried in from the fields outside, and the outer terraces and courts. The crowd grew as they went up the stairs, higher and higher, much further up inside the building than Moon had been before. The steps were taller up here, almost too tall for the Arbora. It just confirmed Moon’s growing belief that the groundlings who had built this place had greatly exaggerated views of their physical size. Some of the Arbora shifted and skittered along the walls, using their claws on the reliefs and chinks in the stone. Flower stayed in her groundling form, and Moon found himself reaching down to take her hand and steady her as she climbed.
“Thank you,” she said, a little breathless. She glanced up at him, her brows quirking. “There’s no need to be nervous.”
Moon had thought he had kept his expression laconic, but maybe not. And he wasn’t the only one who was nervous; her hands were cold as ice. “Unlike you?”
She gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Very unlike me.”
The stairs took another turn, ending in a broad landing, and Moon was surprised to see Stone waiting there. As they reached him, Stone leaned down to take Flower’s other hand, and he and Moon lifted her up the last step. “I hate this damn place,” Stone muttered.
“Really?” Flower pretended to look startled. “And you’ve kept your views to yourself all this time?”
“Why do you hate it?” Moon asked, ready for any distraction. Only one archway led off the landing, opening into a narrow passage lined with glow-moss. The Arbora crowded down into it, talking in whispers, nervously jostling each other. At least the closed-in feeling was alleviated by the high ceiling, nearly three times Moon’s height.
Stone growled under his breath, causing several Arbora to give him wide berth. “It’s a dead shell. It’s not Raksura.”
“No one knows what that means except you,” Flower said, with the air of somone who had heard it all before. She turned to lead the way down the passage.
“That’s the problem,” Stone said after her.
As Moon followed her, Stone caught his arm. Twitchy already, Moon managed not to slam himself into the wall flinching away. As the Arbora flowed past them, Stone said softly, “Pearl is old, and she’s ill, and she’s stubborn.”
Moon nodded, thinking what Stone was mainly telling him was, Don’t panic.
Flower waited at the end of the passage where it opened into a larger chamber, and stood to one side so the others still filing in could get past her. “This is going to depend on a number of things that we have no control over,” she said softly, as Moon and Stone reached her.