He could hear the others already stirring; Jade walked out into the main room first. She went to the doorway and glared out at the sky, already lightening to a clear blue. “It could have rained,” she said under her breath. “We’ve got no reason to stay here now.”
“It’s going to look suspicious.” Balm followed her and leaned in the doorway to look worriedly at the sky. She told the others, “The Gerent gave us a firm answer last night, and we’d already said we needed to return to the court as quickly as possible.”
She was right. The sky was almost cloudless. Everyone had eaten heavily yesterday, more than enough for the flight to the mainland; they should already be in the air. If the Islanders asked what they were waiting for, Moon didn’t know how Jade would explain it.
Root wandered over to the doorway and looked out uncertainly. “What do we do if they don’t come?”
“They’ll be here,” Jade said, turning away from the door. It was hard to tell if she was reassuring Root or herself.
Chime got the brazier lit in the main room and made tea. It gave them something to do, which helped a little, but Jade and Balm still stalked the empty rooms. The others were restive. Root kept climbing the walls and trying to hang off the door-frames, and Song and Branch bickered like bored children. After a while, Moon felt he had to do something with the younger warriors. Jade was so tense she hadn’t been able together spines down for half the morning. “Maybe I should take them fishing?” he said to Chime. He thought it was either that or kill them.
“You almost drowned yesterday,” Chime said, banging the iron kettle onto the holder. “You want to go out there again?”
“Yes.” Moon had been almost killed too many times to develop an aversion to anything. “I wasn’t planning to go fishing under the moss net.”
He looked up to find Jade standing over him, her frills stiff with exasperation. “If you would take them out of here for a while, I’d be grateful—”
Then Balm ducked through the doorway from the entrance hall. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered anxiously. “I think this is it.”
“Tell them to come in.” Jade turned to the younger warriors. “Go out to the court! Don’t make it look as if we’re waiting for something.”
Song, Branch, and Root scrambled to obey. Moon stayed where he was, sitting beside the brazier. After a moment of twitching uncertainly, Chime settled back down on his cushion. Jade shifted to Arbora, probably to get rid of most of her spines so they couldn’t flare out in agitation.
Then Balm walked in with Delin, Niran, and Endell-liani. Endell-liani inclined her head in greeting and said, “Forgive the intrusion, but Delin-Evran-lindel said that you were expecting him?”
Delin said, “We were invited for breakfast,” and winked at Moon. Niran flushed dark with mortification.
“What if they don’t come?” Root said. “What if they keep the pearls and cheat us?”
Moon, stretched out in the sun and trying to nap, hissed under his breath. They were at the metal ruin on the shore of the Yellow Sea, up on the top platform. They had arrived yesterday evening and stayed the night. It was now afternoon, another clear day with a bright sun and a good, cool wind off the water. With a dry edge to her voice, Jade told Root, “Then we go back home empty-handed and I look like a fool. Now be quiet.”
Delin had arranged to meet them here with three of his family’s wind-ships. The other Islanders might guess that the departure of the ships only a day after the Raksura had left had something to do with an arrangement to help move the court, but they wouldn’t be able to prove it. Delin seemed to think that was all that mattered. He had explained, “They may talk, but that’s all. We have always been explorers. We make the connections with other races that allow the trading guilds to open new markets and prosper, to let our scholars increase their knowledge. We go as we will and have never been under their direction.”
Moon hoped he was right.
At dawn this morning, Jade had sent Balm and Branch on ahead to the court, to let them know that the boats were coming. It was hard to believe that the entire court could make ready to move in just these few days, but Moon was willing to be surprised.
He had spent a lot of time last evening and this morning out scouting, going alone so he could stretch his wings and cover more distance. He had looked for signs that they had been followed by Fell or suspiciously low-flying cloud-walkers or anything else out of the ordinary, but he had found nothing. Just sea and dunes and salt marsh.
Some distance to the north, he did stumble on a small camp of groundlings who were following a narrow river inland. They had white silky fur that rippled in the wind, and bony crests like sea birds. They also had good eyesight; they spotted Moon at a higher altitude than most groundlings could have managed, and stared with interest and not much apparent fear, shielding their eyes against the sun. Moon supposed that if he had been Stone he would have taken the chance to stop and chat—but he wasn’t, and he didn’t.
He had returned to find Chime hunting among the tidal pools, and Song and Root playing in the surf. Jade sat on the beach, her blue and gray colors vivid against the golden sand. As he landed next to her, she asked, “Any sign?”
“Nothing.” He shifted to groundling, feeling uneasy. The ruler who had taken control of the cloud-walker would have known they had reached the Islanders, but not what they had done there. If they were lucky, it hadn’t had a chance to pass on even that much information to the others. But Moon wasn’t willing to trust to luck. He said, “Fell don’t give up.”
“I know,” she said, absently drawing her claws through the sand. “They should be here looking for us. I’d worry less if they were.”
They had all eaten. Root and Song had played in the waves until they were half-drowned. Moon felt he knew every pace of the surrounding marshland. At this point, there wasn’t anything to do but sleep in the sun and wait. The metal of the platform was baking hot, and lying on it in groundling form felt like a luxury. Groundlings with skin unprotected by scales or fur shouldn’t be able to touch metal this hot without burns, so Moon had always been careful not to indulge in it in front of anyone.
“But what’s to stop them from keeping the pearls?” Root persisted. He was on watch, and he, at least, was wide awake.
Chime and Song, sprawled near Moon on the platform, both snarled in chorus. But with weary patience, Jade said, “Their people are traders. For them, baubles like that are a measure of trust.”
Baubles, Moon thought, grimly amused. There had been times when a few baubles would have made all the difference in the world.
At least it gave Root something to think about. He was quiet long enough that the sun lulled Moon to sleep again. The next time Root spoke, it was to say, “Something’s coming in from the sea.”
Moon rolled to his feet, almost shoulder to shoulder with Jade. In the distance, a shape danced on the horizon, but he couldn’t tell if it was on the surface of the water or flying above it. There was no distinctive scent in the wind, animal or otherwise.
“Wait here.” Moon shifted and jumped off the platform.
He had only made a third of the distance before he could see it wasn’t one shape but three: three long wind-ships, their fan-like sails spread, making their way towards the shore.
Moon had been on boats that sailed on the water, but he had never had the freedom to climb all over one in his shifted form and see how it worked. The wind-ship was bigger and more interesting than any he had been on before. Under the main deck toward the bow were two large holds, empty except for food stores for the crew and clay water jars. The holds took up most of the room, but toward the stern there were smaller cabins for sleeping and eating, and one solely for the storage of maps, drawn on thick reed paper and rolled into lacquered wood cases.