“Buy time?” Stone repeated. “How? The Fell want to kill us all—”
Pearl shook her head. “That’s not what they want.”
In pointed disbelief, Jade said, “Then what do they want? Tell us. I’m sure we’ll be fascinated.”
“Fascinated isn’t the word.” Pearl hesitated, then drew in a sharp breath. “They want to join with us.”
Everyone stood there for a moment, still with surprise. A rustle of confusion flitted through the warriors, though none of them dared to speak. Even River and Branch and the others closest to Pearl looked uncertain, as if they hadn’t heard this before, and wished they weren’t hearing it now. Moon thought, That can’t mean what I think it means.
Flower stepped up to stand next to Jade, her expression caught between incredulity and dismay. She said, “The Fell told you this? When?”
“Not long ago. The first time they came to the colony,” Pearl said. Under the concentrated stares of Stone, Jade, and Flower, her spines seemed to droop a little. River and her other warriors didn’t look so confident anymore. Branch looked sick.
Stone shook his head, unwilling to understand. “By join, do you mean eat? Because...”
“No.” Pearl lifted a hand to her head, and for a heartbeat she looked exhausted. “Their flight is failing too. They said their progenitor died a few months ago. That’s when they first approached me.”
Before this, Moon would have given a lot to see something that shocked Stone, but he didn’t want it to be this something. Stone said, “You’re saying they want to breed with us.”
Pearl looked away.
The temple was quiet except for the buzz of flies from the pool. Even the trilling birdcalls from the forest seemed distant. Chime was the first to break the silence.
“That’s not possible,” he said, his voice thick with horror. He turned to Flower. “Is it?”
Everybody turned to Flower. She wet her lips, and said reluctantly, “It might be. The mentors who study the Fell have always believed that we came from the same source. That the similarities between us and the rulers are too pronounced to be coincidence.”
Moon had a terrible realization, and he had to ask, “Stone, at Sky Copper, you said the clutches were missing?” Though he kept his voice low, it snapped everyone’s attention to him as if he had shouted.
“I couldn’t find the bodies of the royal clutch in the nursery,” Stone answered, and rubbed his eyes. “The Fell took them.”
Took them alive, Moon thought, sick. Alive as prisoners of the Fell.
“How could you... how could you conceal this?” Jade stared at Pearl, and her voice came out in a low hiss. “I should rip your heart out.”
“I didn’t say yes, you stupid little child. I’m not insane.” Pearl bared her teeth. “But I didn’t say no, either. I knew what would happen if I did.” She stepped back, her tail lashing uneasily. “I didn’t expect them to attack Sky Copper. I thought they just wanted us.”
“Our nursery has Arbora and warriors, babies and fledglings.” Flower looked ill and old, the skin of her face so pale and translucent Moon thought he could see her bones. She pushed her hair off of her forehead and paced away a few steps. “Sky Copper has... had at least one fledgling queen, and probably two younger consorts.”
“Why didn’t the Fell join with them then, if that’s what they wanted?” Chime burst out. “They must need Arbora, too. Why destroy...” He hesitated uneasily. “Unless they made Sky Copper the same offer.”
“And their queen said no,” Pearl finished, watching them. “That’s what I believe happened.”
Stone stared at her in helpless dismay. “Why didn’t you tell me this, Pearl? Or tell Flower or Jade, or Petal or Bone or Knell? You didn’t think we had a right to know?”
“Because I knew you didn’t trust me,” she said wearily. “You’d just accuse me of treating with the Fell again.”
Flower flung her hands in the air. “Pearl, I didn’t accuse you of that until you let a Fell ruler into the colony to speak to you. You told me nothing!”
Pearl hissed at her. “There was nothing you could do. Nothing to be done. This was my burden to bear. You’ve said your scrying is useless. You can’t see anything. None of the mentors can.”
Flower turned away from her with an angry shake of her head.
“You could set a trap!” Moon shouted, unable to stand it a moment more. “You have something they want, so you make them think they have you and then you kill them. You don’t negotiate, you don’t let them...”
Pearl snapped around to face him, the barely restrained violence making him fall back a step. “You little idiot, you don’t know anything!”
“Stop it!” Flower held up her hand. “All of you be quiet.” Her head was cocked, as if she was listening intently. “Stone, there’s something here.”
Stone turned away from Pearl, scanning the empty temple. “Where?”
Moon looked around too, hampered by trying to keep Pearl in his peripheral vision. Nothing moved in the still air. Through the archway he could see the pool, a cloud of insects humming above the scummy surface and the carcass. “The water.” The words came out before he finished the thought. The opaque water, that might be a pace deep, or twenty paces, thirty paces. The stench that concealed any trace of what might have passed through the temple...
Green water erupted from the pool as something huge burst up out of it. Moon dove sideways and shifted in mid-motion, even before he realized it was a major kethel.
It plunged up the steps, charging under the archway, and headed straight for Stone. Stone shifted into his Raksuran form just before it struck him, bowling him over backwards. Moon lunged for it as it passed, but a casual blow from the kethel’s tail sent him flying, bouncing off the paving before he skidded to a stop. He lifted his head in time to see the kethel pin Stone against a pillar, and thought, Pearl let us shift; she didn’t know the Fell were here.
Heart pounding, Moon rolled to his feet. Bodies sprawled on the ground; the kethel had knocked everyone across the temple, and some of them hadn’t been quick enough to shift. He started toward Stone but someone shrieked a warning and he spun back to face the pool.
A second, smaller kethel heaved up out of the water and surged up the stairs into the temple. It ducked under the square archway and stopped. The horns studding its head were draped in fragments of the grasseater corpse that had concealed the Fell’s distinctive odor.
Moon braced himself to leap for its throat, for the thinner scaled skin at the edge of its armored collar. He had to slow it down, give the others a chance to get away. Then he froze in shock. There was something on its chest, a bulbous, dark tumor, like the sac that had been attached to the cloud-walker’s back. He had a heartbeat for the horrified thought, Oh, tell me that’s not...
The sac split open as if sliced from the inside and dakti spilled out, ten or more. They dropped to the floor and bolted into the temple. The kethel grinned, the long jaw revealing a double row of fangs, and charged.
Then Jade hit the paving beside Moon, landing in a crouch. As the kethel lowered its head, sliding to a halt across the mossy stone, Moon darted to the left and Jade dove right. The kethel made a grab for Moon, whipping its head down, but he twisted away, feeling its talons brush against his furled wings.
Moon saw a flash of blue and gray pass over the kethel’s armored forehead. The instant of distraction had allowed Jade to leap atop the creature’s back. Snarling in fury, the kethel forgot Moon and reached up to claw at her. Moon lunged in, getting under its head, clawing up past the heavy armored plates on its chest. He ripped and tore at the softer scales of its throat. It shrieked in pain, but the wash of blood and ichor that flowed down its hide from above told Moon that Jade had just ripped out one of its eyes.