He wondered how close the others were, if they had reached the mainland yet, if they had gotten help from the Kish the way Kalam hoped. Every instinct said he and Stone were close behind the Hians, that they needed to keep moving. He hoped Jade didn’t regret sending them ahead.
Moon had spent the last night before they had left with Jade, Chime, and Balm, up on the roof of the wind-ship’s stern cabin. It held the ship’s cistern, and was far enough away from the steering cabin and the sleeping areas down in the hull for relative privacy. Not that Raksura in general cared much about privacy for sex, but Moon still did, and he had been around Golden Islanders and Jandera enough by now to know that they appreciated it too. It didn’t help that his mother was on this wind-ship somewhere, with Shade and Lithe and the rest of the warriors. Stone, at least, had snuck off down to the sunsailer to see Rorra.
It had been quiet then with not much movement except for the few warriors taking their turn at watch. Jade was sitting up, still in her Arbora form, looking into the distance as the wind pulled at her frills. Moon lay on his side next to her, Chime pressed against his back and half wrapped around him, mostly asleep. Balm lay curled on Jade’s other side, dozing. Jade’s tail coiled around Moon’s arm, and he ran his fingers down the tiny frills along its length. He could tell her thoughts were weighing on her, and to distract her he said, “You can’t see land yet, can you?”
It was partly a joke; Rorra had calculated that they were still some distance from the coast.
Jade tilted her head toward him, but didn’t take her gaze off the dark horizon. “It’s a long way. Are you sure you don’t want to wait another day at least?”
Moon had recovered from the Fell poison and had had nothing to do but rest and reflect on all his mistakes as they made their way back toward Kish. The urge to go after the Hians had been burning in him, he couldn’t bear to wait another day. “I’m sure.” Because it was easier to blame it on Stone, he added, “It’s been hard enough convincing Stone to wait this long.”
Jade had bared her fangs. “I should never have let any of you come on this trip to begin with. Especially the Arbora.”
Balm’s eyes were open, her brow furrowed worriedly. From Jade’s tone, she was about to go back to the conversation they had already had many times, where Jade tried to take sole responsibility for everything that had gone wrong since they left the court. What made it worse was that it inevitably led to the other conversation, the one where they talked about what might be happening to Merit and Bramble. If Moon dwelled on that too much, the mix of fury and fear made it hard to think, let alone plan.
Moon nudged Chime gently until Chime woke enough to nip his ear and let him go, rolling over and sinking back into sleep. Moon released Jade’s tail and rolled over to nuzzle her hip.
Jade said, “I know you’re trying to distract me.”
It would be the last distraction until they found the Hians, so Moon had meant to make it count. Then Jade had growled and dragged him into her lap, and he had tried to make her forget everything that had gone wrong.
Now Moon missed her, and missed the others, in a way that felt like a knot of pain in his chest. He shook away the memories, then stretched, shifted, and leapt out of the cave to hunt.
He found a swampy stretch of water not far from the statue’s left rear foot. It was surrounded by ferns, and the deceptively still pool was filled with large armored lizards. He killed one, carried it back for Stone, and found it gone by the time he got back with a second one.
Moon ate the tail of the second lizard, left the rest for Stone, and went up on top of the statue’s head where shallow basins had formed and collected rainwater. He sat on his heels and started to clean the blood and flesh out of his claws.
The sky was clear with few clouds, and the wind was light but steady. He spotted a few flying boats in the distance, two leaving the city but another one coming in. It meant that for now at least there had been no Fell attack.
Stone’s big dark shape flew past. He circled around and dropped down onto the statue’s head, then shifted to groundling and wandered over to sit beside the puddle.
Moon watched the blood spiral through the water. “I’m guessing you don’t think we should wait for the others.”
Stone rolled one shoulder and scratched under his arm. “What, are you worried about what Jade will think?”
Moon gave him a glare. “Yes. That doesn’t mean I don’t think we should keep going.” Flying boats tended to take a direction and stick to it, not having to navigate around anything except mountains. If the boat hadn’t been cautious enough to change direction once it was out of sight of the city, they still had a good chance to catch it.
“If we hadn’t come ahead and found that moss on the berth, it would have dried out by the time the others got here. And there would have been nobody to tell us about the second Hian ship and the switch.” Stone squinted into the distance. “I don’t want to take a chance on missing something else.”
Moon took the waterskins out of his pack and started to fill them from a clean puddle. “We need to leave the Hian moss for the others. We can put it in a bundle with some of the moss they’re using to track us, and hide it in that hole we slept in, that should work.” He sat back on his heels, glancing around. “We need to mark the top of this statue to help them find it. Something that won’t draw attention if another flying boat spots it, but that they’ll know is from us. It can’t be writing, because the Fell might see it. And it can’t be anything that might get blown away by the wind—”
Stone said, “You sound like an Arbora.”
Moon knew this was Stone trying to start a fight to relieve tension. He shrugged his spines, knowing it would be more irritating than anything he could think of saying.
Arbora liked to talk and they liked to figure things out, which often meant their favorite pastime was to analyze every aspect of a situation from every angle. It also meant that they were very good at coming up with solutions to problems. Which was why Bramble and Merit, with Delin and finally Chime, had been able to discover the way into the foundation builder city.
Stone, faced with Moon’s refusal to argue, said, “Draw a flying boat on it.”
That . . . would work. Moon turned the fastener on the last waterskin and dug the inkstone and paper out of his pack. He handed it to Stone to write the message. After a couple of turns of intermittent study, Moon could read Raksuran well enough but his writing was terrible. They were going to need some rocks to scratch the drawing on the statue’s head. He tried not think about how Jade would react when she found out that not only had they flown ahead instead of waiting, but that a kethel from the Fellborn queen’s flight was following them.
By the time Moon came back with a rock that made a satisfactory dark scratch through the statue’s weathered coating, Stone had filled a page with the elegantly flowing oblongs of Raksuran writing. Stone made a bundle of it and the mosses in a cloth waterproofed with mountain-tree sap, then went down to hide it in the cave where they had slept. Moon’s drawing skills weren’t much better than his writing, but he got started with the rock.
When Stone returned, Moon said, “You think Bramble and Merit—” He hesitated, not wanting to finish that sentence. The Hians had taken them as hostages, but Moon had been afraid they would decide that since they had Merit, they didn’t need Bramble. He was also afraid Bramble would lose her temper, try to kill the Hians, and be killed herself. Or that the artifact would require some test to prove it would kill Fell, and the Hians might use it on Bramble or Merit or both of them. There were so many things to be afraid of at the moment he couldn’t pick just one.