She was trapped there for a little time, as Hians crossed back and forth through the stairwell just above. She hissed silently to herself, seething. The poison in the water was not working as quickly as she had hoped.
Then suddenly the whole boat bucked under her feet. Her shoulder hit a container and she bounced off and rolled on the floor. In the stairwell, Hians shouted in dismay and alarm, and their steps pounded away.
Bramble scrambled to her feet and climbed the stairs. The foyer and the connecting corridors were empty now, but she hesitated, unsure which way to go next. She heard a shout from her left and turned right to bolt down that corridor. A Hian shouted again from behind her and she heard the distinctive cough of a fire weapon.
Bramble dove forward and the disks hit the floor, but as she rolled away she caught sight of one stuck to her arm. Horrified, she clawed it off. The Hian strode forward, lifting the weapon.
Then something gray grabbed the Hian from behind. Bramble heard the snap as the Hian’s neck broke before the limp body dropped to the floor. And she found herself staring at Stone.
All the breath left Bramble’s body in a startled whoosh. His clothes were worn and stained and he smelled like dirt and sweat and home, and she thought she was hallucinating.
Delin peered out from behind him. His eyes were wild but determined. He whispered, “Bramble, we’re escaping!”
Stone hissed, “Bramble, get over here!”
She shoved to her feet, staggered, and flung herself at Stone. He caught her, squeezed her briefly, and set her on her feet. “What— How—” she tried to ask. “You found us!”
“Now come on,” he said, and he sounded just the way he always did, as if she was a baby playing too long in the nurseries and delaying a meal.
Light-headed with relief, Bramble caught Delin’s wrist and followed Stone.
Moon dove down a stairwell and slammed aside two Hians at the bottom. This was an interior corridor with tightly woven moss walls, stem-like beams arching overhead, and light coming from gelatinous globes filled with glowing fluid mounted in ridges in the ceiling.
Merit clutched his collar flanges, gasping, “Moon, Bramble got away, she’s somewhere in the boat, that’s why they brought me up here, to threaten to kill me so they could catch her, but they couldn’t find her— Delin is locked up somewhere—I don’t know where Callumkal is—”
“Stone’s here, looking for them,” Moon told him. Shouting sounded from all directions and the stink of burned moss filled the air. He lifted the weapon and pointed it toward the end of the corridor and the steering cabin, then hit the first trigger to spray wooden disks. The second trigger sent fire streaming after them. It wasn’t as good as a big fire weapon; the moss didn’t seem to catch but singeing it filled the corridor with acrid smoke.
Merit clinging to him, Moon took the next cross corridor and slammed through the hatch at the end, out onto another platform. Moon turned to trigger the weapon again, aiming back through the hatchway. The burst of fire filled that corridor with smoke. He tried it again, but no more wooden disks came out.
Moon tossed the weapon over the rail and climbed up the wall, pausing at the top for a careful look across the cabin rooftops. No movement, and the remaining distance-light couldn’t turn far enough to shine on this area. He slung himself and Merit atop the roof and started toward the stern.
They reached the end of the roof and Moon crouched to see over the edge. The distance-light and fire weapon platform was much lower down on the far end of the stern, and there was another cabin section in the way. If they were quiet, the Hians on that platform shouldn’t hear them. He whispered to Merit, “They gave you Fell poison?” The light was bad but he still couldn’t see scale markings on Merit’s brown skin.
“A little,” Merit whispered back. He shivered and wiped his mouth. “I don’t think they realized how much I spit back up.”
The sound of waves breaking on the beach and on the rocks under the metal causeway was louder. The explosion of the bow’s fire weapon must have damaged whatever had held the boat steady on the lines of force that crossed the Three Worlds, and the crosswind had driven it out over the ruin. The hum of the insect-lizards rose, as those driven off by the explosion returned to the lure of the bug paste.
Moon growled under his breath. “Any time, Stone.”
Merit whispered, “What are we waiting—” Below, a hatch opened under a stairwell landing. With a faint choked sound, a Hian flew out and over the deck railing, vanishing as she fell into the shadows. “Stone!” Merit gasped.
Moon tightened his grip on Merit and caught the edge of the roof. As three dark figures stepped onto the platform, he swung down to land beside them.
“I couldn’t find Callumkal,” Stone said. Bramble stood beside him in her scaled form, her spines twitching in agitation and the salty tang of fresh blood on her scales. She and Delin smelled like Merit, a bitter scent of captivity, of confinement and no access to fresh air.
Moon set Merit on his feet and the mentor grabbed Bramble in relief, and wrapped an arm around Delin to pull him into the embrace. The corridor behind them was dark; Stone must have been ripping the liquid lights out of the walls as he went along. Someone called in Kedaic and someone else called back, but it was muffled, at least a couple of corridors over. Stone was saying, “He’s somewhere on the level below this one, I could scent him in the draft coming from that direction. The Hians cut off that stairwell and I didn’t want to try to get past them with these two.”
“We have to get the artifact too,” Bramble said in a breathless rush. “I told Stone, it’s a weapon, a bad one, worse than anything we thought—”
“Do you know where it is?” Moon asked.
Delin said, “Vendoin has it somewhere.”
Stone asked them, “Can Vendoin use it on us?”
Bramble said, “Not yet, she doesn’t know how, she has to take it somewhere.”
That couldn’t be right. Moon said, “But she used it on the Fell at that river town.”
Bramble’s spines flicked in an urgent negative. “No, Aldoan used it and died. The others don’t know how she made it work!”
Moon hesitated. The artifact was important, but they couldn’t leave without Callumkal. Moon had no intention of telling Kalam that they had left his father behind. He told Stone, “You take them, get out of here. I’ll find Callumkal. Remember to stay away from the stern. That fire weapon can’t turn far enough over this way.”
Stone bared his teeth in frustration. “Get caught and I will come back and slap you unconscious.”
“Right, because otherwise getting caught by these people sounds so attractive,” Moon snarled.
Stone snarled back and jumped backward off the boat.
His scaled form flowed into being just in time to disappear into the haze of insect-lizards below. Moon told the others, “You’re going to have to jump.”
Delin made a faint noise in his throat, then croaked, “I see.”
Merit told Delin, “It’ll be all right, he’ll catch us.”
His voice tight, Delin added, “One of you will have to push me.”
Moon caught his arm. “Just relax, it’ll be fine.”
Below, Stone’s shape materialized out of the cloud of insects. As he turned sideways, Moon snapped, “Merit, now!”
Merit leapt off the platform. In the dark and the haze of insect movement, Moon didn’t see Stone catch him. Several long heartbeats later Stone returned for a second pass with a lighter shape clinging just below his shoulder. “Bramble, you’re next.”