“There they are,” Pearl whispered.
Heart stretched to look. She was afraid of what she would see, but it was just the bright sunlight on the tall grass of the wetlands. Light played on stretches of open water between stands of reeds and the occasional copse of broadleaf trees. She had seen this fringe of the Reaches when they had first arrived here, when they had left the destruction of the old eastern colony and so many of their dead behind.
Floret had described the western fringe of the Reaches as a gradual change from mountain-tree forest to rocky plains. But here on the eastern fringe the change was abrupt; the wetlands turned into lush fields of short green grass, dotted with tiny white flowers and alive with glasslizards and insects, then it stopped abruptly at the line of mountain-trees. Standing on the grass and facing the forest was like looking at the impenetrable wall of a giant cliff face.
Heart had been afraid the Fell would be as thick on the wetlands as the myriad colors of the waterbirds. It was a relief to see the landscape empty. Then a dark shape moved in the distance. And then another, and another. Kethel, Heart thought, and felt a chill travel through the skin under her spines.
She counted at least twelve. They were mostly clustered over a group of low hills, some distance across the wetlands. “Is that an old ruin?” Heart asked softly. The ripple in the terrain of the marshes looked unnatural.
“Probably.” Pearl hissed and said, “There’s more kethel than there were before.”
Malachite didn’t acknowledge that, but after a moment said, “We should go.”
Pearl turned and dove off the branch, snapping her wings out. Heart shivered against the heat of her scales.
They rejoined the warriors and Pearl handed Heart over to Vine again. As they flew toward the camp of the Fellborn queen’s flight, Vine asked her, “Was it worse? Pearl looks like it was worse.”
“We saw more kethel,” Heart told him. She had been hoping it would spark a vision, but nothing had happened yet. She could still sense the potential for one in the awareness of uncertain movement just outside her conscious thoughts.
The Fellborn queen’s flight was camped on a platform high in a mountain-tree. The tree’s canopy bent toward it, the huge branches curved over, giving the feeling of a cavern or a vast green chamber.
The platform had been efficiently cleared to its grassy surface and the Fell had actually built shelters of woven leaves and stripped saplings. There were hearths, too, dug out of the moss and dirt. The big bones of several grasseaters, probably the furry hoppers from what Heart could see, were piled near the edge. Dakti peered out from under the shelters, watching their approach. Heart scanned the canopy and picked out two kethel, coiled on the upper branches, keeping watch. A growl built in her chest and she forced it down.
Vine landed with the others on a branch overlooking the platform. He said to Floret, “That’s weird. It looks like a real camp.”
“It does,” she said, settling her wings. She eyed the camp critically. “I didn’t think they knew how to do that.”
Rise leaned over and told Floret and Vine, “We had to show the dakti how to build the shelters, and what grasseaters to hunt, but I was surprised they actually listened to us.”
“Better you than us,” Vine muttered in Heart’s ear.
Malachite and Pearl waited further down the branch, Malachite as still as if she was a wall carving and Pearl flicking her spines impatiently. A figure ducked out of the biggest shelter and at first Heart thought it was a ruler. As it came further into the open she realized this was the half-Fell queen.
Malachite and Pearl launched off the branch and dropped to the platform, Pearl flicking a spine to tell the warriors to follow. Vine landed with the others and set Heart on her feet. He gave her wrist an encouraging squeeze. Heart took a deep breath, reminded herself she was a mentor, and stepped forward. The wet grass brushed her scales as she moved to stand just behind and to the right of Pearl.
The Fell queen, Consolation, picked her way toward them, a dakti in her wake. She said without preamble, “There are more today. You saw them already?” She spoke Raksuran but not as fluently as the other Fell. She spoke it like Delin did, just a little hesitantly, as if trying to remember words. Heart wondered if it was because the flight had no progenitor. The Fell’s facility for their prey’s languages might come from their connection to the progenitor or the rulers. It was something to talk to Merit about. If Merit’s alive, Heart thought bleakly. If Jade can find him and Bramble.
Malachite said, “We saw them.”
Pearl’s gaze moved over the dakti, the two rulers who remained back near the bigger shelter. The way her spines angled told Heart she was acutely aware of the kethel in the branches above. Pearl said to Malachite, “We need to talk about this strategy of yours.”
The dakti nudged Consolation. She said, “We know how to make the progenitor come to us. But we want something else from you before we do it.”
Pearl’s spines took on a flare that would have caused the warriors to bolt out of reach if it had been directed at them. Malachite tilted her head and said, “And what is that?”
The dakti ducked its head in a gesture Heart would have sworn was nervous. Consolation hesitated, watching them both warily. She dragged one set of foot claws through the grass and moss and said, “We had a consort.”
Heart’s lips peeled back to bare her teeth without any conscious volition on her part. Pearl’s hiss was near soundless and the tip of Malachite’s tail flicked almost imperceptibly. The cold, sardonic amusement was heavy in Malachite’s voice as she said, “You say this to us.”
Consolation’s brow furrowed. “He was my sire. He named me. I can speak of him.”
Heart made herself take a breath. Pearl’s tail lashed. Malachite said, “Speak.”
Consolation said, “Before he died, he said we were going to go someplace, just us and a few others, the nice ones. A big tree, maybe.” She added defensively, “I didn’t know what he meant until we got here.”
Heart had to lock her jaw to keep her expression neutral. It was painful to think about, this long dead consort making plans for escape with his fledgling queen. She wondered if Malachite could identify the court. But she didn’t see how a consort could be taken from a court within the vastness of the Reaches. It must have been an eastern court, one that told stories of their old mothercourt and its colony tree in the west.
Consolation continued, “But we had to learn to hunt grasseaters and grow things, like groundlings.” The dakti risked a glance at the queens, then scratched the side of its head, somehow conveying mild doubt. Consolation eyed Malachite. “If you show us that, I’ll help you with the plan. I can get the most powerful progenitor to come to me.”
Heart could feel the skepticism rolling off Pearl in a wave. Malachite gave no hint of her own reaction. Malachite said, “How?”
Consolation settled her shoulders, her own spines moving, though Heart wasn’t sure what that meant. She said, “I have secret information and she has to come to me to get it. Then she comes and we kill her. This will do what we want, make her flight and the others confused and easier to kill.”
Pearl hissed in disbelief. “And you think that will work?”
The dakti tilted its head to look up at her and said, “It worked on us.”
Pearl deliberately turned her gaze on it and it cringed and edged back a step.
The tip of Malachite’s tail moved in a small circle. “One of the other progenitors won’t take the lead?”
That was what Heart was wondering. The problem was that they had very little idea of how Fell flights cooperated, or didn’t cooperate, with each other. They knew the flights shared knowledge, maybe through bloodline connections between the rulers. Maybe the same way that the rulers of a flight knew one of their own had been killed, and how they could locate the body unless the head was severed and buried. But Heart had never known of two flights cooperating. This idea of different Fell flights massing for a single purpose was new and horrible.