Chime filled the cups with Flicker’s help, and they carried them over to Shade and Lithe. Once Chime was seated, holding the fragrant cup under his nose, Shade said, hesitantly, “You haven’t sensed anything? Like you do sometimes?”
Chime didn’t wince. The warriors kept asking this question, though Shade managed to make his inquiry sound wistful rather than as if Chime was failing as a . . . as whatever Chime was now. “No. I’ve tried but . . . It’s never been a matter of trying, if that makes sense. It just happens, usually around groundling magic.”
Flicker asked carefully, “So that’s really true, about you? That you were born an Arbora?”
“It’s true,” Chime said and shrugged helplessly. At the old eastern colony, Chime had shifted one morning and found himself a warrior. He had lost all the mentor skills, the ability to heal and augur, to produce heat and light out of minerals and plants. But he had also gained some odd sensory abilities. It was a strange situation that Indigo Cloud had mostly become accustomed to over the past few turns, but it was hard to explain to other courts. It was almost impossible to explain it to groundlings, who usually found Raksura difficult to cope with or understand. Shade, who must have been in the position occasionally of being difficult to explain, just nodded glumly.
“It’s a colony response to disease, a drop in Aeriat births, lack of food, other bad influences.” Lithe took a drink of tea and gave Chime a sympathetic smile. “It’s natural, just very uncommon.”
Then Lien, one of the Golden Islander crew, leaned her head in the door and said, “Jade and Balm are returning! The lookouts just spotted them!”
Jade and Balm had been flying all night, stopping only for brief rests. The morning had dawned clear and now they flew over low hills, covered with some unpleasantly spiky and thorny vegetation, punctuated by tall clumps of multicolored fungi and ferns. The only visible sign of groundling habitation was the occasional canal, constructed of wide stone troughs standing on pylons just above the vegetation. Some had been damaged, the flowing water leaking out through holes and cracks, or blocked by debris. A few were whole, the water unimpeded. On one Jade had seen a small groundling boat with sails, traveling down it like a caravan on one of the raised stone roads to the east.
It would have been an easier flight if they had been returning with good news, but at least they had bitter impatience to spur them on.
“If Malachite didn’t find them either,” Balm said, as they shared a waterskin at a rest stop on a bare hill, “that means Moon and Stone are going the right direction.” Balm had probably kept Jade from flying herself to death; in Jade’s current mood, she wouldn’t have heeded the signs of weakness from her own body, but she didn’t want to hurt Balm. Queens could fly faster than warriors, even the strongest female warriors, but with two of them, they could take turns sleeping and hunting, a much more practical way to travel and better suited to the effort of such a long sustained flight. “That’s reassuring.”
“That’s terrifying,” Jade corrected. She was tired and her mood was sour. As a line-grandfather, Stone was supposed to be the sensible one, though the idea of Stone preventing Moon from doing anything rash was hilarious if you knew either of them. “They’re bad enough on their own. Together they’re worse than Malachite.”
Balm snorted a laugh, and then had to wipe water off her face. She was wearing her groundling form to rest, and Jade could clearly see her bloodline resemblance to their birthqueen, Pearl. Queens never gave up their fangs and claws and the closest they could get to a groundling form was a softer version of the Arbora’s scaled form, but Pearl’s features were echoed in the sharpness of Balm’s profile. Balm’s groundling skin was a dark bronze, her hair a dark honey color, and like all Raksuran warriors she was tall and all lean muscle. Jade had always wondered if Balm was what she would have looked like if she had been born a warrior. Shaking the water droplets off her hand, Balm said, “If Malachite finds the Hians, she won’t wait for us.”
“We’re lucky Malachite acknowledges that I exist.” Jade sighed in exasperation, pushed to her feet, and held out a hand to Balm. “Let’s go.”
By the time Jade and Balm circled down to land on the wind-ship, Chime, with Kalam, Rorra, and Niran, stood on the bow deck, watching impatiently. Root, Briar, and River perched up on the nearest cabin roof. The Opal Night warriors, waiting for Malachite’s return, gathered towards the stern, with one sitting up atop the mast in the look-out’s basket.
“Well?” Chime said as Jade lit on the railing. “Were we right?” Root hopped down from the cabin roof, his spines twitching with impatience.
“No.” Jade furled her wings and hopped down to the deck, as Balm landed a few paces away. “We were right about the flying boat with Hian traders heading northeast, but we were able to get close enough to see the crew were all other species. It wasn’t Vendoin.”
Kalam looked away, out over the plain, controlling any reaction. Niran swore. Rorra, more practical, just unfolded the wooden plates of a map. She said, “Malachite isn’t back yet, but Lithe says the signs are still pointing strongly toward the southwest. It’s suggestive that Dranam tracked Moon and Stone moving south of the port.”
Jade felt frustration spike her as if she had flown into a thorn tree. Moon and Stone had agreed to wait if they found anything, or if they lost the trail. But had she really expected them to abide by that? Or had she counted on them to disobey her and rescue the Arbora, so she could still look like a proper queen who would never send consorts into danger?
“If Moon and Stone find them, will they try to follow on their own?” Kalam asked, turning to face Jade.
More angry at herself than anyone else, Jade controlled her spines and said, honestly, “I would like to believe that if they pick up the Hians’ trail, they’ll wait for us. But knowing them, they may follow the Hians and take the first opportunity to rescue the others.”
Kalam nodded, almost trembling with nervous anxiety. Niran put a hand on his shoulder and steered him down the deck. “Come and help me tell Diar the news. She can’t leave the steering mechanism and if she has to wait much longer she will turn furious.”
Kalam went without protest, though it was clearly more an opportunity for Kalam to conquer his emotions in private than to appease Diar, who was as calm under adversity as her grandfather Delin.
Rorra looked from Jade to Chime, who was still bouncing impatiently. She said, “I’ll get the other map,” and followed Niran and Kalam away.
Rorra was right, Kalam and Niran weren’t the only ones disappointed at the lack of news. Chime said, anxiously, “You think Moon and Stone are following the Hians.”
“They know to be careful,” Jade said. They knew to be careful; whether they actually would or not was another question. Jade saw Balm lean heavily on the railing and told her, “Go in and get some rest.”
“I know you don’t think you do, but you actually need rest too,” Balm told her, but pushed off the railing and started down the deck. “I just wish this boat could move faster.”
Standing by the cabin door, his spines drooping as he watched them, Root said, “I don’t understand why we can’t push it.”
Chime grimaced and said, “It. Doesn’t. Work. Like. That.” His voice was tense with barely contained irritation.
Jade suppressed a spine lift of exasperation. Obviously, while she and Balm had been absent, the other warriors hadn’t been handling the tension very well.
“You know, just let him try.” That, unexpectedly, was River. He jumped down from the cabin roof to take Root’s wrist and pull him toward the stern of the boat. “Come on, let’s go to the back and you can push on the boat.”