“Not yet.” Heart looked up at him, brow furrowed as she read his expression far too accurately. “Why are you looking at us like that?”
“No reason.” He had to get them out of here. He stepped back and jumped for the side of the shaft. He caught the ridge around the edge and dragged himself up handhold by handhold until he reached the membrane that sealed the opening. He pushed at it, but it refused to budge. The texture was stiff and slick, as impermeable as glass.
Below him, Snap said in frustration, “It’s no use. We stood on each other’s shoulders to get to it, but without claws we can’t get through.”
Moon kept prodding at the edge, looking for a weak point, but he was afraid the boy was right.
Heart asked, “But where are the others? Did the hunters get away? Knell said he saw—”
Moon’s fingers slipped and he dropped back to the floor. He absently wiped his hands. And if you got it open, what were you going to do then? The dakti were still up there, guarding them.
“The others are fine.” He gave them a meaningful look and jerked his head up toward the opening. The Fell might be listening; with Moon here they would have to realize that Jade and the other Aeriat couldn’t be far behind, but he didn’t want to spell it out for them.
Heart subsided, and the others held back frustrated questions.
Watching him carefully, Needle said, “At the colony, there was a ruler who said Pearl had left us, that she wouldn’t be coming back. He said they were waiting for Jade to join them, then we were going to leave the colony and go somewhere else.” She made a despairing gesture. “Here, I guess.”
Moon paced around the chamber, investigating the shadows. It was big enough for a few Dwei to sit or sleep in comfortably, and nearly featureless. “I think I saw that ruler. Right before Pearl tore his head off.”
There were some gratified hisses, and Needle hugged herself. She said, “I knew the ruler was lying.” She shot a fierce look at the others. “The queens are going to save us.”
They were still watching him worriedly, and Gift said, “But why did the Fell bring us here? And why us? If they just wanted to eat us. We’re small, and not much of a meal.”
Moon hoped to avoid that question. He stepped to the wall with the horizontal slits, and peered out. The chamber looked down on the hive’s vast central well, daylight falling down from some opening high above. The curving walls were ringed with bulbous chambers like this one, and open ledges. Wedging himself into the gap, he had a good view of the floor several hundred paces below.
A big tunnel opened in the side of the hive down there, and towards the center of the floor was a round shaft, maybe the one that had led up from the groundling ruin, the one that had shone with daylight. Two kethel lay beside it, stretched out in sleep, armored sides lifting with their raspy breathing. It was probably the two who had flown here from Indigo Cloud. From the distance and turns the dakti had taken to bring him here, he thought the Dwei must be imprisoned on that bottom level, not far from where the tunnel emerged.
Merit tugged on his sleeve impatiently. He had fluffy light-colored hair and wide eyes, and made Moon think of what Chime must have looked like as an Arbora. He persisted, “You know why they brought us here, don’t you?”
Maybe not knowing was worse. Moon turned back, and all their faces, staring up at him with hope and fear and dismay, made his heart hurt. He said reluctantly, “A ruler told Pearl and Jade that this flight wanted to... join with your court. We know they already had at least one crossbreed, a dakti with mentor powers. It was the reason that the court was trapped. It sees through the other dakti’s eyes, and does something so you can’t shift. There must be another one here; that’s what’s keeping us from shifting now.”
“A dakti?” Heart blinked rapidly. “But...”
Dream said, “That’s not even possible, is it?” She turned urgently to Heart. “We’re too different from Fell. We couldn’t... could we?”
Snap sank down to sit on the floor, as if his knees had gone weak. “I thought they were just going to eat us.”
“Why do they want to do this?” Merit shivered. “So they can get mentor abilities? Mentors are born at random. Even when two mentors mate, it’s not certain. We think it has something to do with queens and consorts mating with Arbora, but that’s just an idea. Those clutches are just as likely to be warriors, or ordinary Arbora.”
If Moon had to guess, which he didn’t want to, he would have said that the Fell meant to get mentors the same way Raksura did, by mating the Arbora until mentors were born. Only in Raksuran courts it was all done voluntarily. He didn’t answer, hoping the Arbora would leave it at that.
But Heart looked up at Moon. “But you’re a consort. They must want...”
“Uh, probably.” He folded his arms uncomfortably, not certain how much to tell them. They seemed perfectly capable of drawing all the terrible conclusions on their own. “That’s why the Fell stayed at the colony. They were hoping Jade and I would attack with Pearl and the others, that they could trap us.”
“But they didn’t trap you,” Dream put in. “Until now, I mean. And Jade and Pearl are still free, right?”
“We had a weapon.” Moon turned away again, knowing he was doing a bad job of reassuring them. He looked through the slit, down at the bottom of the well. The two kethel were still asleep, but some dakti flitted around down there now. “We can’t use it here. The rulers know about it now.” He wasn’t sure what had happened to the waterskin of poison. If the Dwei had hoped to use it somehow to bargain with the Fell, they were out of luck.
The Arbora were quiet for a moment, trading uneasy glances. Then Heart asked, “What about the others trapped in the colony? Are they all right? Did you see them?”
The others chimed in with questions then and Moon ended up telling them a little about the attack on the colony. He tried to keep the explanation confined to things it wouldn’t do the Fell any good to know, in case the dakti were listening or the rulers questioned them later.
Heart and the others hadn’t known that Petal and so many of the soldiers were dead, believing all the missing members of the court to be imprisoned in another part of the colony. Watching them cling to each other and mourn, Moon felt terrible that he couldn’t even tell them all the names of the dead.
“They kept us in those sacs,” Snap said, leaning against Merit for comfort. “Sometimes they let us out and brought us food, but only a few at a time. We couldn’t shift, and with the dakti and kethel there we couldn’t run away.”
Finally, when the Arbora had asked every question they could think of, and discussed the situation to the point where they were just repeating themselves, they settled down to try to rest, curling up against each other. Moon sat nearby, leaning back against the wall with the slits so he could look out at the central well. He wasn’t certain if they trusted him completely, but his presence seemed to give them a little hope, anyway.
The dakti didn’t return. Moon watched the sunlight falling through the top of the hive change from morning to early afternoon. He knew Jade and the warriors had had time to make it here by now. They should have found his trail and the metal-mud, found the message he had left on the rock, and made it into the groundling city. And are probably sitting down there trying to think how to take on at least three kethel at once. You never did work that part out, either. The Aeriat who had survived imprisonment in the colony were probably too weak to fly at all yet, let alone to follow Jade all the way out here.