Vinat hesitated, apparently disbelieving. Kalam added, “It’s true. And we don’t care about you, or what you do after this, or where you go. It’s Vendoin we want.”
The male said, “Lavinat betrayed Vendoin and Bemadin.” Vinat turned toward him as if she might try to stop him. Then she slumped against the wall, clearly realizing the words were out and nothing could call them back. The male continued, “Lavinat killed Bemadin.”
Not that the words were that helpful. Moon remembered Lavinat from the confrontation in the bow, but he wasn’t sure what it meant that she had betrayed Vendoin.
Jade turned to Bramble and Delin for an explanation. Brow furrowed in confusion, Bramble said in Raksuran, “That was the other Hian leader. I don’t think she was here the whole time. I got the impression she wasn’t with Bemadin when they caught us in the ocean.”
Delin was nodding. “I agree, I think perhaps she was on the Hian ship—this Hian ship—that we met at the port city, when we left the original ship behind.”
Jade nodded to the young male. “Go on.”
He said, “After everything went dark, Vendoin and Bemadin were trying to decide what to do.” He looked at Stone and Moon and lifted his shoulders in a gesture that conveyed wariness and fear. “They were afraid you would come back. There was a place they had to look for, but Lavinat said they should wait for daylight. I went to Bemadin’s cabin to sleep. Then I heard weapons, I came out. I found her . . .” He looked at the others.
Vinat said, “Lavinat’s cohort were moving through the ship, killing anyone they saw. We made it in here, and barricaded the door.”
“Vendoin isn’t here,” Jade said. “Maybe she betrayed you too.”
“Why?” The male asked. “She was leader, we followed her.”
Jade eyed him skeptically. “Then what caused the fighting?”
There was another hesitation. Moon glanced at Jade, got a spine flick that told him to go ahead. He said, “We know about the weapon. We know Vendoin is going to use it to kill all the Fell, Raksura, Jandera, and any species related to them from here to the eastern sea.”
The others all looked at Vinat. She said, “It was Fell, when we started this. It was all meant to kill Fell, that’s what they told us. Then the Fell appeared and Aldoan had the weapon on the deck, and they took her, and . . . It killed Aldoan, and the scholar who was going to help Vendoin, and all her family. Bemadin and Vendoin became afraid that it meant the weapon would kill Hians as well. There seemed no other reason for Aldoan’s death. Our physician examined her body and there was no wound made by the Fell. She said there was bleeding in the brain, but no sign of a break to the skull, nothing else that could have caused it.” Vinat looked at the wall, her body going stiff and stubborn. “That is all I know.”
Thoughtful, Delin twisted his fingers in his beard. “Does the physician live?”
Another Hian said, “We don’t know. But she was in Bemadin’s cohort, not Lavinat’s.”
The little male said, “Bemadin was angry at Lavinat.”
The others turned to stare at him, but more in surprise at what he said than anger that he was talking. He continued, “Bemadin came to her quarters the night before—” He threw a clearly nervous look at Moon and Stone. “The night before all this happened, before we reached the sea. She said Lavinat had abandoned her senses. She wouldn’t tell me why. That is all I know.”
Jade waited, but none of the others spoke. She motioned for Bramble and Delin to retreat, and stepped back through the doorway, tugging Kalam with her. They went a few steps down the passage, out of earshot of the Hians. Moon followed, with Stone pushing off from the wall to stroll after them. Moon said, softly, “‘Why’ is a good question.”
“If Lavinat and Vendoin disagreed over how or when to use the weapon, and it turned to violence, it could work in our favor,” Delin put in, as Chime stepped closer to listen.
“It can’t work in our favor yet,” Jade said. “We’ve still got to find them.”
Flicker called from the stairwell, “Jade, the wind-ship is here.”
“We need to go.” Stone’s voice was an impatient growl. “We can’t wait around here to figure this out.”
“I know.” Jade tilted her head at Kalam. “What should we do with them?”
Kalam didn’t hesitate. “Leave them. It’s Vendoin I want to find. But we should take the levitation packs they have aboard, and disable the ship’s weapons. Rorra will know how to do that quickly.”
“Go with Flicker and tell Rorra to get started,” Jade said, and Kalam moved hurriedly to the stairwell.
Once he and Flicker had climbed out of sight, Jade turned to Bramble and Delin. “What do you two think we should do?”
Jade had given Kalam the impression she was letting him make the decision, but Moon knew she had only been asking for his opinion. Kalam wasn’t the only one injured by the Hians.
Chime stood with Bramble and Delin, watching, while his spines flicked uncertainly. The other warriors were still by the door, keeping guard on the Hians. Only Balm had her head tilted in their direction, unobtrusively listening.
Delin glanced at Bramble, then said, “Not kill them, not on my account at least. I don’t see how we can wrest the weapon from Vendoin without killing her and perhaps the others with her. That will be a necessity, this is not.”
Bramble stared at the deck, flexing her foot claws. Then she said, “I’m not mad enough anymore to make it easy.” She lifted her head. “So we should do what Kalam said, and leave them.”
Jade met Stone’s gaze. “Well?”
Stone lifted his brows at Moon. Moon didn’t want to leave the Hians alive. Except then he pictured himself killing the little male, and knew that just wasn’t going to happen. That one might be considered a mature adult by Hian standards, but there were too many things about him that read “fledgling” to Moon. And leaving him alone without the others was worse. Vinat seemed to be the only capable one left, and without her, the others would die. They might die up here anyway, but that was their doing for following Vendoin in the first place. He said, “Leave them.”
Stone shrugged. “It’s Vendoin I want.”
Jade’s spines moved in assent. “All right, we’ll leave them.”
Moon felt he had to ask, “What about Root?” He wasn’t even sure if a warrior got any say in something like this.
Jade hissed in mingled annoyance and resignation. “He’s in no state to give his opinion on anything, that’s why I left him on guard on the deck. Come on, let’s go.”
Not long after, the wind-ship was underway, following the direction Dranam was able to tease out of the moss samples. Moon had heard her tell Rorra, “It’s a relief. I was a little afraid it wouldn’t work in this strange place.”
While they were waiting for Dranam to work on the moss, there had been a discussion about how best to pursue the small flying boat. Stone was in favor of flying ahead to try to catch it. Moon had to admit that it sounded like a good idea to him, too. The night had seemed long, but the little boat couldn’t have more than a few hours head start.
But Jade had refused to consider that. “Not here. We don’t know anything about this place.”
Niran agreed. “There could be anything out there. And now that we have managed to retrieve everyone who was missing, I feel we should stay together.”
Stone folded his arms. His expression would have still been opaque to most observers but Moon recognized the stubborn set to it. Stone said, “We don’t know how far they have to go. If they get there ahead of us and use this thing, the first we’ll know of it is when we drop dead.”
Niran grimaced down the deck at the young Golden Islanders who were sorting through the fire weapons taken from the flying boat. They didn’t know yet if the artifact would affect the Islanders.