From across the passage, Stone said, “In here.”
It was a room for storing the devices groundlings used for navigation. Stone stood in front of the open cabinet where the maps were kept, some on wooden panels, others in fabric rolls, and more recent ones sketched on thick paper. Stone had done a quick search, opening all the cabinets and any bags or boxes, even the ones that weren’t large enough to hold the artifact. The rock Bramble had described sat in a padded container. Moon ran his hand over it but there were no seams, nothing to indicate there was anything inside.
“Found this.” Stone pulled a wooden box out of the cabinet. It was about the right size, empty, with its lid smashed. Stone sniffed it, then shook his head. “Can’t tell.”
“It could still be aboard,” Moon said, but it was beginning to look like whatever had killed the Hians had been after the artifact, too. And while something might have come silently out of the plain during the night, it was far more likely these dead Hians had brought their enemies with them.
Jade came down from the steering cabin, frustration quivering in her spines. “It’s not there, either.”
They returned to the lower level to check the rooms along the curve of the passage, and found a few more dead Hians, but still no sign of Vendoin. Hissing in frustration, Jade turned down the stairs toward the stern.
This corridor was wider and ran straight through the ship. Jade reached the first junction in one bound, and cocked her head to listen. Catching up with her, Moon heard the faint voices of the warriors. Jade called out, “Balm, did you find anything?”
A flutter of movement came from the stairwell, then Saffron poked her head up through it. “We just found a barricaded door. Something’s alive on the other side.”
At the bottom of the stairs was a wider junction with two passages and a large door that probably, from Moon’s memory of Callumkal’s flying boat, went to a common room. Metal bars had been braced across it, keeping it from sliding open. Unlike the sealed door Moon had broken open to free Callumkal, these looked hastily and sloppily shoved into place.
Balm stood beside the door, while Deft and Saffron kept watch on the other passages. Chime crouched on the floor and dug at the moss along the bottom with his claws. Balm told Jade, “We found dead Hians scattered all through here.”
Jade moved a spine in acknowledgement. “So did we. Any sign of Vendoin?”
“Not yet.” Balm added, “We found bodies in the supply stores, like they’d been forced in there and then killed by fire weapons. The jars and boxes had been dragged around, like someone had removed some supplies. There was a room up on the level above this one where ten Hians were laid out, all with broken necks or like they were smashed against something—”
“Uh,” Moon interrupted. “That was us. Probably. When we got the Arbora and the groundlings out.”
Saffron twitched her spines but didn’t otherwise react. She had seen Moon and Stone fight before. Deft turned to stare, then hastily looked away when Stone met his gaze. Jade flicked a spine impatiently, and Balm continued, “This is the only room we found blocked off like this.” She glanced down at Chime.
He sat up and reported, “Still just breathing, no movement.”
Moon crouched down with Chime, and helped him pry up another section of moss. “If they locked themselves in last night, and then had some of the water Bramble poisoned, they might be still unconscious.” Or the Hians inside could be lying in wait with their fire weapons, a possibility no one needed to mention.
Jade’s tail lashed once in decision. “Balm, Saffron, pry the bars off. Don’t get in front of the door.”
Moon pulled Chime up and out of the way. Balm and Saffron got the first bar off, then the second. They braced themselves as Jade stepped forward. Chime stirred uneasily, and Moon held his breath, every nerve going tight. If one Hian was awake, pointing a weapon at the door . . . Then Jade slammed through the barrier. Balm and Saffron lunged after her.
Something clattered inside, but there was no characteristic whoosh-thump of a fire weapon. Moon pulled Saffron out of the way and looked in.
It was a big common room, with a small square stove for holding heat-spelled moss. Jade had landed on the far wall, and Balm stood in the broken remains of the door. Several Hians sprawled on the floor and one on a padded bench seat, all apparently unconscious. At first glance, none had been wounded, though some had been messily sick. Moon looked for the water source and spotted it on the far walclass="underline" a narrow copper-colored pipe, running down from the ceiling and ending in a curved tap with a lever.
Jade leapt down from the wall and used her foot claws to roll the first Hian over. Balm said, “This door was braced from the inside, too.” She nudged a stool which had been taken apart and jammed into the door.
Chime leaned in behind Moon. “So these Hians barricaded themselves in here and whoever shot the others blocked the door from the outside, so they couldn’t get out? And then left them here?”
“Nice people,” Saffron commented succinctly.
Moon looked around but there was nowhere to conceal anything, no containers or cabinets, and the Hians’ light clothing left no hiding places. The artifact’s continued absence was making his back teeth itch. It was gone for a reason, and it wasn’t going to be a good reason.
Jade prodded another unconscious body with a foot. “Tie them up. And collect any of those small fire weapons you find. We’ll take some onto the wind-ship and dump the rest overboard.”
Chime said, “So where did the people who did this go?”
Stone said, “I think I have an idea about that.”
While the warriors continued to search for the artifact, Moon and Jade followed Stone to the bottom of the boat, finding a single small stairwell that led down. The hull curved in here, and there were no cabins, just cubbies and storage racks mostly filled with moss canisters and the supplies for making moss grow. A heavy acrid scent clouded the air.
Then the passage ended in a narrow circular stair, and Moon caught the scent of outside air laced with death. A slow draft drifted up the stairwell. Stone crouched to look. “This is it,” he said, and started down the steps.
Below was another dead Hian, with fire weapon wounds in her chest and the side of her face. The fire had actually burnt away the armor plate on her skin.
Stone had already stepped past her and stood beside an open section in the floor. “This wasn’t here last night.”
Moon stepped to the edge. The opening looked down on the curving stem of the nearest pod and the rising mist that concealed the bottom of the ruin. He crouched down to stick his head through.
“Careful,” Jade said.
He felt her hand in his frills, ready to jerk him back. “There’s nothing down here,” he said. He could see the hull on either side, where it extended down to frame a whole section of the flying boat that just wasn’t here anymore. Stone was right, this was the spot they had put the bug paste on, but it hadn’t been eaten away by anything. He drew back to look up at Stone. “So there was a separate piece of the boat here?”
Stone nodded. “Has to be. And the missing Hians are on it.”
“How could that happen?” Jade’s expression was baffled. “A piece of the boat couldn’t fly by itself, not unless it had a motivator . . .” She trailed off. “Unless it did have a motivator.”
Moon had a sudden realization. “The little flying boat on the island, the one that the Fellborn queen stole. Maybe it was like this, part of a bigger flying boat. Callumkal must have left it there for Kellimdar and the others when he went back to Kish-Jandera for help.”