The whoosh of air warned him; Moon looked up to see Stone high in the air, drawing nearer to the tower. Moon just had time to stand and back away from the fire. Stone swooped in and dropped a carcass on the paving, a creature nearly as big as a kras, with thick oily skin and flippers instead of hooves.
Stone landed lightly on his feet, then shifted back to groundling. He waved toward the dead creature, still exasperated. “That’s what I’m planning to eat. You? From what I can see, you’re mostly skin and bones.”
He had a point there, but Moon demanded, “Then what do you want from me?”
Stone paced toward the fire, frowning down at it. The impatience was gone from his voice when he said, “I want you to come with me, back to my court.”
That... wasn’t what Moon was expecting. It took him a moment to realize he had heard Stone right. “What for?”
His gaze still on the fire, Stone said, “I’ve been looking for warriors to join us. Our last generation... didn’t produce enough. I’ve been at a colony to the east, the Star Aster Court. But I couldn’t talk any of them into coming back with me.” He glanced up, his face a little wry. “You’ve got somewhere else you want to go?”
Moon woke slowly, his body sluggish and his brain reluctant to face whatever was going to happen next. He couldn’t hear Ilane or Selis’ deep breathing, or the camp waking up around him. He was curled on his side, head pillowed on his arm, stiff and aching from lying on dirt-encrusted paving, but it was pleasantly warm. He rubbed his face and squinted up at the tent stretching over him—He went still, suddenly wide awake. Not a tent. It was a wing. Stone’s wing. That’s right. Yesterday your friends tried to murder you. The manacle was still around his wrist, the skin under it rubbed raw.
Moon rolled onto his back and stared up at Stone’s wing. With the morning light glowing through it, the dark, scaly membrane shone with a faint red tint. He hadn’t seen anybody else’s wings since his mother had been killed. This close he could see scars, old healed-over rents where the scales had been torn. The front edge of the wing still looked razor-sharp, but the skin folded over the joints was hard and gnarled where Moon’s was still smooth. Hopefully still smooth, if he could shift.
They had spent the night on top of the tower, not talking very much. Moon still had no idea how to reply to Stone’s offer, if Stone was even serious about it. Stone had stated that he was tired of arguing and they would talk about it in the morning when he hoped Moon would be less crazy. After some sleep, Moon was willing to admit that he had been a little hysterical, but it had been a hard day.
But it’s over. I hope. Moon bit his lip and looked at his hands. The faint outline of scales wasn’t visible, at least in this light. He pressed a thumb to the skin of his forearm, forcing the blood away, but still couldn’t see anything. All right. That’s good. He knew why he was reluctant. If he tried and nothing happened... Putting it off wasn’t helping. He took a deep breath, and tried to shift.
He felt the change gather in his chest. There might have been a hesitation or it might have been his fear. Then he felt his bones lighten and his scales scrape against the paving, the weight of his folded wings, his tail. He curled up on himself for a moment, relief washing over him in a heady wave.
From the deep, steady breathing, Stone was still asleep, or doing a good imitation of it. Moon crawled to the edge of the big wing, then wriggled out from under it.
Once free, he stood and stretched, shaking out his spines and frills. The morning light was bright on the snow-capped mountains, the air chill and crisp. Nothing had disturbed the roof of the tower while they slept except a few brave carrion birds picking at the remnants of the riverbeast carcass.
The manacle was still on Moon’s wrist. He hooked his claws under the lock, wincing as the metal ground into his scales. He exerted careful pressure until the lock snapped and fell away.
Moon crossed the pavement and leapt to the battlement, digging his claws into the crumbling stone. He looked down at the dizzyingly steep drop to the rock below. Then he unfolded his wings and dove.
He flew up and down the gorge, stretching his wings, fighting the gusty wind and feeling the sun heat his scales. The exercise made him hungry.
He rode the air currents down to the river, which rushed over tumbled rocks in its shallow stretches, then turned calm where the channel was wide and deep. Moon plunged into water that would have been shockingly cold in his groundling form, and swam along the bottom. He found a slow-moving school of fish, each nearly three paces long with thick, heavy bodies and trailing iridescent fins. He snatched one and shot up into the air again.
There hadn’t been much point in seriously considering Stone’s offer when he hadn’t known whether the poison had ruined him permanently or not. Now... Moon found himself thinking about it. Long ago he had given up looking for his own people, assuming if there were any others, they were lost somewhere in the vastness of the Three Worlds, not to be found except by wild accident. Now the wild accident had actually happened.
But going with Stone meant trusting him. Moon would be putting himself in the middle of a large group of shifters, and while he might be a Raksura, he knew nothing about what they were like. If they turned out to be as murderous and violent as the Fell, he could find himself trapped and fighting for his life.
Another option was to look for another groundling settlement to join, which meant starting over again, with all new pitfalls and hazards. What he wanted most at the moment was to fly off alone to hunt and explore, with no other people to make him constantly wary. He was sick of growing to like and trust groundlings like the Cordans, and knowing it all meant nothing if they found out what he was.
But he was sick of being alone, too. He had done this all before, resolving to live alone only to become desperate for company, any company, after a few changes of the month.
He was on his fifth fish when he surfaced and saw he wasn’t alone. Stone, in groundling form, sat on a big flat rock by the bank. He leaned back, propped on his arms, face tipped up to the sun. Deliberate and unhurried, Moon slapped his fish against a rock to kill it, finished eating, then went back in the water to wash the guts off his scales. He surfaced again in the shallows, below where Stone sat, and used the sandy bottom to clean his claws.
Still sunning himself, Stone said, “You’re not supposed to do that, you know. Raksura don’t.”
“Raksura don’t bathe?” Moon said dryly, deliberately misunderstanding. He shook water out of his wings, spraying the bank. “That’s going to be a problem.”
Stone sat up to give him an ironic look. “Yes, we bathe. We don’t fish. Not like that.”
Moon climbed up onto the rock and sat to the side so he could keep his wings unfolded and let them dry. The sun was warm but the wind was still cold, and if he switched back to groundling form now, the water still on his scales would soak his clothes. “Why don’t you fish?”
“I don’t know. Probably never had a good place for it.” Stone squinted at him. “So. I’ve got one other court to visit before I head home. Are you coming with me?”
Moon looked across the river. Small swimming lizards stretched out on the rocks across the bank, waiting for them to leave so they could go after the remains of Moon’s fish. “If you were looking for Raksura, why did you come to the valley?”
Stone didn’t seem disconcerted by the question. “It was on my way back. I stopped to rest, caught a scent of something that turned out to be you. It was faint because you were in groundling form.” He shrugged. “Thought I’d stay on a few days to look around, see if there was a small colony there that I hadn’t heard about.”