He stood out on deck, breathing the damp cool wind. Flicker and Deft, on watch atop the steering cabin, regarded him warily. Then he went to look for Saffron. He disliked Saffron as much as she disliked him, but they had been imprisoned by Fell once together and that did create some sort of bond. Sort of.
He found her in the stern, using a bucket of water to scrub dust out of her frills. Some Golden Islanders sat nearby, sewing up rips in the covers used to protect the windows in bad weather, and River was up in the look-out post atop the mast, so Moon kept his voice low. He said, “Jade’s upset. Did she say anything to you?”
“We barely stopped to sleep and hunt.” Saffron glared at him.
Moon stood there, waiting. After a long moment of trying to maintain eye contact, Saffron hissed and said, “She didn’t like dealing with the Kish groundlings.” She flicked her spines. “That was all. Who wouldn’t be upset after all this?”
Moon couldn’t decide if she was telling the truth or being a good warrior and refusing to carry tales about the queen to the consort. He hissed at her and left.
He tried to find Stone then, but Stone was hiding so effectively that he might as well not be on the boat. Chime, Shade, Lithe, Heart, and Merit were all asleep in a pile in one of the other cabins. Moon gave up and went to lean against the deck railing near Bramble.
The breeze held just a hint of rainy season coolness and was like silk against groundling skin. Everyone else was either asleep or up atop the cabins, enjoying the sun.
Jade was obviously unhappy with him, and he was worried that the root of it lay in what was improper consort behavior by any Raksuran standard. Jade had been tolerant of Moon’s behavior, because the court had been lurching from one crisis to another and there wasn’t much room for a consort who couldn’t take care of himself. But before the dreams had started and Callumkal had arrived, things had been quiet. Maybe Jade had gotten used to that quiet and it had eroded her tolerance for a consort who couldn’t stay out of trouble.
And he was very aware that a consort getting into trouble in the Reaches was a very different thing from a consort being captured or killed by official forces of Kish. That if Malachite had wanted to retaliate, everything could have been unimaginably worse.
It was a depressing thought. Queens and consorts who traveled frequently together weren’t exactly unknown, at least in Indigo Cloud’s history. Moon had heard all the stories about Solace and Sable, though their adventures were probably exaggerated. What he and Jade had done hadn’t seemed all that different.
Moon glanced over his shoulder and saw Root coming out of the belowdecks door. Root saw him, twitched, and vanished back inside with guilty speed. Exasperated, Moon turned back to the view of the approaching wetlands. “Bramble, is something wrong?”
“With me, no,” she said, sounding genuinely puzzled. “With everybody else, sometimes I wonder.”
They were two days into the wetlands, the long prelude before the Reaches, when the warriors on watch called a warning. They had seen several figures flying at a distance, either Aeriat or Fell.
Stone climbed up on the steering cabin to shade his eyes and squint in the indicated direction. He jumped down from the cabin to report, “Warriors, coming this way.”
Moon hissed out a breath. A scatter of warriors sounded like a planned patrol, not survivors fleeing another Fell attack.
Jade’s spines twitched. “Can you tell who it is?”
“Not at this distance.” Stone stood, waiting for Jade to make a decision. Their behavior towards each other was absolutely correct, but the obvious disagreement between them, whatever it was, hung in the air like a boulder.
Jade said, stiffly, “Will you go up and signal them?”
Stone nodded and turned for the stern. Jade’s spines tilted in distress for an instant before snapping back to a firm neutral. Moon caught Bramble’s gaze, and Bramble signaled bafflement. Moon had no idea either.
In the past two days, it had become obvious that some Raksura were not speaking to other Raksura but there were too many Raksura on the boat to make the configurations obvious. Stone was avoiding everyone, Chime and Lithe were as baffled as Bramble, and when Moon had tried to ask River, he had hissed, “I’m not involved in this!” and climbed up on top of the mast again. Shade had changed the subject so adroitly Moon couldn’t figure out if he knew anything or not. Any attempt to pin down Merit just resulted in pointed questions about Moon’s injuries and veiled threats to put him into a healing sleep. Delin and all the other Golden Islanders seemed oblivious to whatever had happened, which further confused the issue. To Jade, Moon said, “Scouting for Fell?”
Stone jumped off the stern, shifted, and caught the wind, rising high above the wind-ship.“Maybe,” Jade said, watching Stone.
Moon waited on the deck with Jade, the air cool and as humid as a wet blanket. There were traces of rot in the breeze, but not nearby. As the strange group drew closer, River and Flicker went up in the air to question them. They landed back on the deck and River reported, “They’re from Emerald Twilight and Ocean Winter. They say they have news.”
Jade turned toward Moon. “It’s better they don’t see you.”
Moon stared at her, baffled. “Huh?”
Jade said pointedly, “It’s Emerald Twilight. You know how they are. They might start rumors. Tell Shade, too.”
Moon had to bite his lip to keep from baring his teeth. Emerald Twilight was perfectly capable of starting rumors about him whether they saw him or not. But he made himself turn and go through the doorway. He met Shade coming up the steps, caught his wrist, and tugged him back down. “We have to hide.”
“I thought they were just warriors,” Shade said, confused.
Moon swallowed a hiss. “They are. Stone had sex with a sealing all over this boat but we have to hide because they might start rumors.”
Shade pulled Moon to a halt at the bottom of the stairs by simply stopping. He said, with just a little exasperation, “Moon, you’re a consort, but there are courts that won’t treat you like one unless you act like it. Emerald Twilight is one of them. Believe me, I know.”
Moon managed not to growl. He was right, which didn’t make it any better. “I know.”
So they ended up sitting in the cabin next to the main hold while Jade and the others spoke to the warriors. They kept the door open so they could hear, and Chime, Flicker, and Bramble sat with them. Delin sat in the doorway, trying to be part of both conversations. Moon had difficulty controlling his irritation, but at least it was good to get more recent news of the Reaches.
The two female warriors who led the group were Crocus from Emerald Twilight and Spin from Ocean Winter, and they had been sent to make sure the Fell had left the wetlands. Crocus said, “We’ve been finding half-dead stragglers, and scattered dakti. There was word of an almost intact flight still in the area, but it was gone by the time we got out here.”
Spin added, “We could tell the further the Fell were from the Reaches, the worse they got it, whatever it was. The last day or so, we haven’t seen anything but rotting clumps of bodies.”
As Jade asked for more details about the situation, Moon tried not to think about what it would have been like to come home and find the Reaches like this. Colonies empty and silent, with nothing but the scent of decaying bodies. The Hians had come so close to succeeding.
Even with the recent news, it was still a relief to see the colony active and well when the wind-ship dropped below the Reaches’ canopy and made its way through the mountain-trees to Indigo Cloud.