The surface split, but the cloud-walker didn’t react. The big body tipped down, diving toward another target. Moon clawed and tore at the mass. It split further, releasing an acrid stench he could scent even in this harsh wind. It abruptly collapsed, revealing the dark shape that lay inside. Moon stared in shock. Jade was right. Hidden inside the growth was a Fell ruler.
Unconscious, cradled in what was left of the tumor, it looked even more like a Raksura—a consort—than the minor dakti. Like them, it had webbed, leathery wings, but its dark scales were smoother, its face less animal and more Raksuran. Instead of spines, it had a rigid bone crest fanning out from its head. Moon surged forward. He had to kill this thing, now, before—
Its eyes snapped open, dark with feral rage. It leapt at him.
It hit Moon and bowled him backwards. He lost his grip on the cloud-walker’s plate and tumbled right off its back with the ruler on top of him. Moon caught its wrists, keeping its claws away from his throat, and jammed one foot against its stomach to hold it off. It whipped its tail around and caught him across the back, the sharp barb barely deflected by his spines. It laughed in his face, knowing if Moon let go, it would have him. The only safe way to kill a ruler was to catch it while it was asleep or drop on it from behind, and Moon had missed those chances.
Past the edge of the ruler’s spread wings, Moon saw movement, a flash of blue and gray Raksuran scales. I hope that means what I think it means. He snarled at the ruler, wrenched free, and fell away.
It howled with amusement and angled its wings to dive at him. Just as Jade hit it from behind.
There was a confused flurry of wings and tails, a spray of black Fell blood. The stench of the blood went straight to Moon’s head; he lost all caution and flapped to get up to them to re-join the fight.
Something slammed into his back, a wing beat hard enough to stun him. Moon plummeted, unable to catch himself. A heartbeat later he slammed into water, the force of his fall sending him straight down to strike the shallow, sandy bottom. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs and he flailed for the surface. But his claws caught in a soft mesh, like a net threaded with layers of filmy cloth. Not cloth, moss and water plants. He had hit the water in one of the Islanders’ floating fields.
He tore at the strands wrapping his arms, trying to rip the soft fibers away and fight to the surface. While the moss shredded easily, the net itself wouldn’t tear.
Moon thrashed toward the surface. The stuff wrapped around his wings, his tail, as if it were alive; the weight dragged him down. Don’t panic, he thought, his heart pounding frantically. He couldn’t go up so he tried to go down, struggling to get below the net so he could swim out from under it. He scraped the bottom, sand and shells scratching against his scales, but the whole mass moved down with him, twisting around him. He hadn’t had a chance to take a deep breath before he went under. His lungs burned as he ripped at the net, fighting the drag of his own trapped wings. He knew he had only one choice left: he shifted.
Much of the weight dragging at him vanished but water flooded his lungs. The net still wrapped his body. Blind, choking, he tore upward but the moss and netting closed over him, blocking his way to the surface. He thought, You should have taken the knife. Happy now?
Then everything went dark and drifting.
The next thing he knew, someone pounded him on the back. Moon choked and coughed until he got a ragged breath of air.
An arm around his chest held him up just above the moss-clotted water, an arm with scales. In instinctive reflex he tried to shift again, but nothing happened. He thought woozily, That’s either very bad or—He let his head drop back and saw the person holding him was Jade.
She hung off the side of a big flying boat, clinging with one hand to a rope. Above her, Chime gripped the side of the boat with his claws, one hand wrapped around Jade’s wrist to keep her from falling. An Islander woman suspended beside them wore a roped harness that let her hang nearly head-down in the water. She sawed at the net with a long blade. Moon didn’t know if Jade had really killed the Fell, if the others had survived the fight. “Where—” It came out in a barely audible rasp.
“Hold still,” Jade said, her voice gritty with the effort of holding up his grounling form plus the water-logged weight of the net and the moss. He wanted to tell her to let go. The only thing supporting her was Chime’s grip on the boat; if she fell, they would both be trapped in the net.
The weight dropped away abruptly, and Jade gasped in relief. The Islander woman leaned back in the harness, shouting, “He’s free! Pull, pull!”
Chime hauled at Jade, and Jade dragged Moon up. He held on, watching the water and the sinking tangle of net and moss recede, until Jade pulled him over a wooden railing.
Moon grabbed it and hung on, determined not to collapse. Several Islanders retreated to the central mast, where they hauled on the ropes attached to it. The sails unfolded from the sides of the mast in a light wooden framework, extending out like giant fans.
The deck swayed under Moon, and he thought his head was swimming. Then he realized the boat was lifting up from the water, heeling over as it rose in the air and turned back toward the city. “Did you kill the Fell?” he croaked.
“It’s in pieces,” Chime told him, jittery with relief. “The others are looking for its head. The cloud-walker just flew away, as fast as it could.”
Jade added, “The Fell was controlling it.” She turned abruptly to the Islander woman, who was being helped out of her harness by two sailors. “Anything you want, anything in our power to give, just ask.”
The woman was startled, looking from Jade to Moon. “It isn’t necessary. You drove the cloud-walker away.”
“It is necessary,” Chime hissed in Raksuran, and turned half away to look out over the sea. “That Fell was after us. It caught the cloud-walker last night, and followed us. Once it realized we must be here for the boats—”
“Yes, it followed us.” Jade turned back to him, her voice a low growl. “Pearl didn’t send it here.”
Moon wanted to argue, but just held on to the railing. A Fell ruler hadn’t decided to follow them on an off chance; it had known they had an important task, even if it wasn’t certain just what the task was. And someone had told it.
Chapter Eight
The flying boat took them up to the highest island, to a building of sun-warmed clay and reed-thatched roofs, made up of dozens of slim towers, balconies, and domed turrets. Moon was too sick to investigate how the boat worked, or enjoy the novel sensation of flying in comfort with something else to do all the work. The craft swung close to the turrets and dropped a gangplank.
Moon followed Chime and Jade as Endell-liani led them down onto the wide circle of the tower’s docking platform. The fresh wind was the only thing keeping him on his feet. Endell-liani told Jade, “This is the palace of the Gerent and the trading guilds. The rooms in this tower are for your use. You are our honored guests.”
As Jade thanked her, Balm, Branch, Root, and Song arrived in a noisy rush, landing on the platform with a clatter of claws against wood. Jade hissed them quiet and spoke to them in Altanic, so Endell-liani could follow the conversation. “Was that the only one?”
Balm shifted to groundling, the others following belatedly. “There was nothing else as far as we could see,” she said, breathless. “The cloud-walker is still heading out to sea, so fast we couldn’t catch up to it.”