“It isn’t always this bad.” Stone sounded weary. “She was better yesterday.” To Flower, he said, “We need to make plans. Send someone to get the maps.”
“Petal already has.” Flower tugged on Stone’s arm. “That should be enough. The grenilvine works quickly.”
Stone pulled the cloth away and stepped back. Moon turned around, feeling the back of his neck, startled to find scabs instead of open cuts. Flower took the blood-stained cloth away from Stone and stood on her tiptoes to look at the wound. She nodded to herself, patted Moon on the arm, and walked back inside.
Stone watched him, giving nothing away. “Are you staying?”
Moon had regained enough self-control not to snarl the answer. “I said I would.”
Stone’s smile was a thin line. “Yes, you did.” He turned away, and Moon followed him into the common room.
He caught many sideways glances, worried, uncomfortable, unreadable. Petal, Rill, and several others pulled cushions and mats out of the way, clearing a large space on the floor. More Arbora came in; Moon recognized Knell, the leader of the soldiers, and Bone and some of the other hunters. Balm and several other warriors followed them in; they looked uneasy, but no one objected to their presence.
Then Chime and Bell carried in a big, rolled-up hide, nearly twelve paces long. They put it down on the floor and unrolled it, pulling the edges to spread it out.
Moon stepped closer, unwillingly interested. It was a map, carefully drawn in black, blue, green, and red inks on the soft surface of the hide. Everything was drawn in broad strokes, with mountains, rivers, and coastlines sketched in lightly. He had never seen a map this large, showing such a vast area of the Three Worlds.
“We’re here.” Stone stepped out onto the map and tapped a spot with his foot. It was a star shape next to the blue line of a river. “From here, I could get across and out of the river valleys in three or four days.” His brows drew together as he studied the faded ink below his feet. “That’s eleven or twelve days for our warriors, more when they’re carrying Arbora. And we still have a long way to go after that.”
“Eleven?” Distracted, Moon padded across the map, looking for the Cordans’ valley so he could trace their route here. Stone’s pace, judging by the trip from Sky Copper, was one day to what would have been three at Moon’s pace. “You mean nine.”
“I mean eleven,” Stone said. “Consorts and queens fly faster than full grown warriors. And I wouldn’t be pushing them as hard as I pushed you. You’ll get faster as you get older and bigger; they won’t.”
Moon grimaced—something else he hadn’t realized. He had noticed that Chime and Balm flew at a more leisurely pace, but had thought that was just because they hadn’t been in a hurry. He found the spot that might be the Cordans’ river and followed it up into the vague outlines of a mountain range.
Balm said, “But Pearl was right. We have more Arbora than Aeriat, plus we’d have to carry supplies for the journey, and everything we’ll need at the new colony. It would be taking an awful chance to split up the court like that.”
Knell the soldier seconded that with a grim nod. He was powerfully built like Bone, but not nearly as grizzled and scarred. “It would take several trips, and we’d be vulnerable both here and at the new place. It would give the Fell plenty of time to attack.”
Bone scratched the scar on his chest. “You could abandon most of us.”
Several people hissed at him, Aeriat and Arbora. Stone gave him a bored look. “And we could all eat each other before the Fell arrive. That would solve our problems, too.”
“Now that we’re done with the daft suggestions,” Flower prompted. “Anyone have anything sensible to say?”
Moon crouched to examine the area where he thought Star Aster might be, but the places indicated were all marked with glyphs in a language he couldn’t read. He said to Stone, “So you’re thinking of something to transport everyone in. Like a boat?” Though navigating an unknown river could be almost as slow and dangerous as walking.
One of the smaller Arbora, sitting at the edge of the map, asked, “What’s a boat?”
“It’s a thing some races of groundlings use to travel on water,” Petal explained.
And there’s that, Moon thought wryly. None of the Raksura would know how to sail or navigate a river.
But Stone said, “Like a boat.” He turned, taking another pace across the map. “Have you ever heard of the Yellow Sea?”
Moon watched him, frowning. “No.”
Flower walked over to stand next to Stone, thoughtfully twisting a lock of her hair. “It’s a shallow sea, very shallow, barely a few paces deep in some stretches. Something in the water makes everything yellow—the sand, the plants.”
Stone nudged a spot on the map with his foot. “There’s a groundling kingdom out there, a remnant of one of the flying island empires. They have flying boats. Raksura have treated with them before, and I’ve been out there a few times.”
Flower nodded slowly. “That could work, if the boats are large enough.” She lifted a brow, giving Stone an annoyed look. “How long have you had this in mind?”
“Not long.” He nodded to Moon. “When I went back to your flying island, I looked at the books you found. That got me thinking about other possibilities than just carrying the Arbora.”
Moon shrugged noncommittally. He remembered the pictures of the people with tentacles. If the flying boats were more manageable than carriages on the backs of giant birds, it might work.
“You want to transport the Arbora in a flying boat?” Knell said, staring at Stone as if he had shifted and managed to end up with a second head.
Stone lifted his gray brows, fixing a concentrated stare on Knell. “Why not?”
“I don’t know.” Knell stepped back off the map, making a helpless gesture. “It sounds crazy.”
“We could still be attacked while we’re moving,” one of the other soldiers said uncertainly.
Flower still stared down at the blot of delicate color that marked the Yellow Sea, brows knit in concentration. “We could be attacked while moving in the conventional way. With these flying boats, we could move all at once, and perhaps faster, and the warriors would be free to fight.”
“And we could bring more of our belongings,” Petal said. She had taken a seat at the edge of the map, her arms wrapped around her knees. “Like the anvils for metal-working. I couldn’t think how we were going to move those.”
There was a murmur of agreement from around the room.
“How do we get their boats?” a younger male warrior asked, sounding baffled by the whole idea. “Steal them?”
“You could buy them,” Moon pointed out, exasperated. These people were hopeless. “You’ve got silk cloth, furs, metals, gems. You could buy anything you wanted in most of the civilized cities in the Three Worlds.”
Stone gave the young warrior the I can’t be bothered to deal with your stupidity look Moon knew well from their travels together, then said to the rest of the gathering, “We could bargain to use the boats just for the journey. It’s not like we’ll need the things once we get where we’re going. Like Moon said, we have goods we can offer them in exchange.”
“We have to try.” Flower glanced at Stone. “Will you go to speak to them?”
“I’ll go,” a new voice said. It was Jade, standing in the outer doorway. She was still in her other form, her wings folded, so weary that her mane was nearly flat. Moon felt everyone looking at him, or trying not to look at him, and tried not to react. Jade continued, “Stone should be here if the Fell return. And I’ve heard the stories about the Yellow Sea. Solace and Sable and a flight of warriors first visited the groundlings there.” She lowered her head, the scales on her forehead rippling as she frowned. “They were a sister queen and her consort, from an earlier generation.”