Bramble heard the steps of at least four groundlings. They stopped nearby and Delin said anxiously, “Bramble, Merit, you are there?” He spoke Raksuran, and his voice was hoarse and strained.
“We’re here,” Merit called back. Bramble stepped to the side, angling to see. Delin stood at the edge of the opening. He was small and slim like all Golden Islanders, his gold skin weathered and worn like an old tree. All Islanders had straight white hair, but now Delin’s was ragged and unkempt, and his long beard was in disarray. It was hard to make out details in the bad light, but she thought his cheeks and the soft flesh under his eyes were sunken, a sign of illness. She wanted to growl aloud in disappointment. This wasn’t a rescue; he was a prisoner too.
“Speak Kedaic,” an unfamiliar voice ordered.
“They don’t understand it,” Delin protested, in Kedaic.
Merit squeezed Bramble’s wrist, and she bit back a quiet hiss of triumph. When Jade had told them at the beginning of the trip that they would pretend not to understand the western trade language of Kedaic, Bramble had thought it was a lot of trouble for not much return, especially once the expedition groundlings had seemed so trustworthy. Moon had thought it necessary, but then Moon was the most suspicious person Bramble had ever met.
Now it was proving more than handy. And it didn’t escape her that Delin had just reminded them of it. Whatever was happening, Delin was still on their side.
The unfamiliar voice said, “I don’t know that I believe you. Vendoin said not to trust you.”
Bramble looked at Merit to share the outrage, and Merit rolled his eyes.
Delin was clearly thinking along the same path. He said, dryly, “Since Vendoin betrayed and poisoned me and my friends, and stole myself and Callumkal away to hold us prisoner, you will understand why I am uninterested in her opinions.”
So just Callumkal and Delin, no one else, Bramble thought. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or newly terrified. If Jade and the others weren’t here, where were they? What had happened to the sunsailer and Rorra and the rest of the Kishan crew?
There was a slight hesitation, and the voice said, “Do they understand Altanic? Speak to them in that.”
Delin switched to that trade language to say, “Are you well?”
“We’re all right,” Merit said, in careful Altanic. “They gave us Fell poison and we still can’t shift. Are the others here?” Bramble nodded approval of the question, knowing it would add veracity to the Raksura-can’t-speak-Kedaic fiction.
Delin answered, “No. Vendoin says they were left on the sunsailer. Perhaps I believe her.”
Bramble almost bit through her lip in anxiety.
“Are you all right?” Merit asked. “You smell like you don’t feel well.”
Bramble heard the Hians react to the question, as if they found it unsettling. Delin said, “Vendoin added a mixture to the supplies sent down to the sunsailer, a combination of Fell poison and some other simple that made us all unconscious. It has made me quite ill, but I recover.”
Bramble drew breath to speak, but Delin added, “I know your sister Bramble is very afraid, but you must reassure her, so she does not panic and make herself ill too, you understand.”
Bramble let the breath out, startled. Ah, I think I see. She nudged a nonplussed Merit, who said doubtfully, “I’ll try.” She nudged him again and he added, “She’s very upset. What do they want with us?”
Speaking Kedaic, the other voice interrupted, “That’s enough.”
In the same language, rapidly, Delin said, “But surely I should be allowed to tell them that we go south to another place of the foundation builders, and I have no notion yet why Vendoin has betrayed us—”
“No, that’s enough.”
Bramble barely heard the rustling, the protests as Delin was pulled away. “Why?” Merit whispered. “Why is this happening? What do they want?”
Bramble swallowed down bile and tried to remember everything Vendoin and Callumkal and the others had said about the foundation builders. “The Hians knew things about the city the Kishan didn’t.” The Hians could see in colors that eluded both the Kish-Jandera and the Raksura. Vendoin had said she was translating all the writing on the walls, but they had only had her word for it, and now they knew her word was nothing. “Maybe there was a map to this other foundation builder place. Vendoin wanted it for the Hians, and not the Kish-Jandera, and she stole Callumkal and Delin, and us, to help her get inside it.” That presupposed a lot of things, the main one being that the new city would be sealed like the sea-mount city. It also presupposed that Vendoin valued Merit and Bramble’s contribution to opening that city, which was not an impression that Bramble had had before.
Merit said, “We don’t know that the others are all right. Delin didn’t see what happened either.”
Bramble turned away. Her mind was racing and she needed to settle herself and get down to some serious thinking. “We have to get away and find them.”
Merit hissed in frustration. “How? We can’t even shift! I can’t even make light!”
“I don’t know, not yet.” Except Bramble knew she wasn’t Merit’s sister, not the way the Altanic word meant, and that she wasn’t afraid, not the way the Hians would think, not the paralyzing fear of helpless prey. Delin knew that as well as she did; he was preparing the Hians for something, the way Arbora would prepare the ground of a garden for planting. “Delin is trying to give us an opportunity. We just have to wait to see what we can do with it.”
CHAPTER TWO
The Port of Gwalish Mar
Sleeping in swamps was always difficult. The brackish mud was too cool against Moon’s scales to be comfortable, and every time he managed to doze off, something crawled over him. The clouds of insects sheltering in the tall grass weren’t much interested in Raksura, but the ugly little things that looked like fish with legs had sharp teeth and were annoyingly persistent. Moon had always found sleeping in his scaled form awkward and not restful, but the distractions made it nearly impossible.
Fortunately for his temper, the sky was finally darkening toward evening. Moon shoved himself up out of the mud and slid through the sharp grass blades and over to a much larger puddle. He found a knot of driftwood near the edge and chunked it in. “Stone, wake up.”
Bubbles broke the muddy surface, then a big dark scaled tail whipped up and took a swing at Moon. He dodged and went to find a less muddy place to clean off in.
He waded through the waist-deep grass out to one of the pools where the sea entered the wetlands. Sitting on his heels in the cool salt-water, he scrubbed the sticky mud off his scales with handfuls of sand. The empty sea stretched out, the evening sky was indigo and purple, and the quarter moon gleamed on the water. The breeze held saltwater and the intense green scent of the wetland grasses, leavened with various flowers and laced with bird scat and dead fish. All the groundling shipping that he had spotted throughout the afternoon, both surface sailing ships and flying boats, had already made port.
Moon glanced around again out of habit, even though nothing could see him except for a few tall spindly shore birds striding away through the shallows. Then he shifted.
His wings, tail, spines, and black scales flowed away into his soft-skinned form. Anyone watching would now see a tall lean groundling, with dark bronze skin and dark hair. He was dressed in light pants cut off at the knee and a loose brown shirt, the kind of clothes some groundlings wore for sailing or other work. It wouldn’t draw attention in most of the groundling ports Moon had visited, but this wasn’t exactly a groundling port. He felt the wind lift his hair and scratched at the back of his neck where he hadn’t managed to get all the mud out of his spines.