As he shook the icy spray off his wings, Jade said to Stone, “We can’t afford to wait until dark. We have to get closer, see what we’re dealing with.”
Stone squinted into the wind. He wore an extra jacket over his own clothes that Moon recognized as one of Rorra’s. “If we stay low, jump from island to island, we’ll have a better chance of not being seen.”
Moon flinched at a crunch near the waterline, but it was the kethel in groundling form. It climbed up to the rock just below the slope and waited expectantly.
Jade sighed. She told Stone, “You—and that—are the ones the Hians are most likely to spot. You’ll have to go high, up to cloud level, and wait for us to signal you.”
Stone grimaced but didn’t disagree. The kethel said, “Groundlings never think to look up that high.”
Everyone stared at it. Jade’s spines lifted. Moon shared a look with Stone, who sighed and wiped the ice crystals off his face. Jade hissed. “Fine, let’s go.”
A large wave hit the other side of the island and cold water filled with ice flecks rained down.
Bramble leaned on the bow, wrapped in one of Kalam’s extra jackets, trying to urge the wind-ship to go faster. After days and days of being trapped on the flying boat, she found it hard to stay in the cabins. She kept falling asleep and waking in a panic, thinking she was still in a cage. Even though the light woven walls were nothing like the flying boat’s moss, and the scents were all of Raksura and familiar groundlings mixed with their strange kethel companion, it was still uncomfortable. She hoped she could get over it, but until then the deck was better, even with cold sharp wind and the strange icy sea.
She was so lost in her own thoughts it took her a long moment to realize that Root stood nearby. She slid a look at him, not pleased to see him. She was furious at the way he had spoken to Jade.
Trying to change a queen’s mind about something was one thing; it was practically an Arbora’s duty. But for a warrior to challenge a queen, and at a time like this . . .
She knew he was upset about Song. But so was everyone else.
As if her simmering anger had actually penetrated his thick skull, he said, “Are you mad at me?”
“Yes,” Bramble snapped. “People die, Root, and sometimes it’s like losing a limb. It always hurts and you never forget.” As if any of them had ever forgotten about Petal and Shell and Branch and all the others killed in the Fell attack on the eastern colony. “But the court has to come first. We’re fighting for all the courts in the Reaches and the east, and a bunch of Jandera groundlings in Kish, though none of them know it. If you can’t understand that, then you’re useless and you should fly off and become a solitary.”
There was a long silence, then Root said, “They don’t care because Song argued with Jade—You and Merit ripped her up because—”
Bramble turned on him with a snarl. He flared his spines. She took a deliberate step closer and said, coldly, “Think twice about that.”
A fight between them would be a disaster. Bramble didn’t want to think about what it would do to Jade, who would have to take the responsibility with Pearl. Stone would never speak to Bramble again. The entire court would be upset and there was no way she would be allowed to clutch with Moon. But Bramble had been helpless and poisoned and frightened for days and if Root touched her it would be a fight she intended to win.
A thump on the deck made them both twitch, then someone said, “Just what the shit is going on here?”
Root fell back a step and Bramble hissed out a breath. It was Spark, a female Opal Night warrior, and Flicker, Shade’s favorite. Spark stepped up to Root. She was bigger than he was, Balm’s size, and muscular across the shoulders in a way that seemed to follow the Opal Night bloodline.
Root barred his teeth at her, but his spines quivered with the urge to drop. “It’s none of your concern. We’re not part of your court.”
Spark tilted her head. “Oh, it is my concern. If you saw a belligerent warrior threatening an Arbora, you’d just stand there and watch?”
Flicker took Bramble’s wrist and tugged her over to his side. Flicker said, “We just chased the groundlings that stole her all across the Three Worlds, and you want to hurt her?”
Root fell back a step and dropped his spines. “I wouldn’t hurt her!”
Flicker hissed in disbelief. “That’s not what it looked like.”
Bramble set her jaw against a well of emotion. She wanted to curl up in a corner and wail. She knew it was her fault, that she shouldn’t have let it go this far. She had failed her court as a sensible Arbora. She choked out, “It’s my fault.”
“It is not,” Flicker said.
Spark lifted her spines as a signal for quiet. Bramble held her breath. In the absence of a queen, the largest female warrior was in charge, and Spark would have been perfectly justified in beating Root senseless for threatening an Arbora. Bramble had lost her control over the situation when she had lost her own temper. All she could do was try to talk Spark out of it.
But Spark didn’t attack. Eyeing Root critically, she said, “Go inside and get some rest.”
Bramble let out her breath in relief. Fortunately for Root, the Opal Night warriors all seemed to be a fairly calm group.
Root, who finally seemed to understand that he had gone too far, took a step toward the doorway. He protested, “I’m on watch.”
“And you’re doing such a brilliant job of it,” Flicker said. He glanced out at the water. “You haven’t even looked at—Wait, what’s that?”
Bramble turned, following Flicker’s gaze. Arbora eyes weren’t as sharp as warriors’ at long distances, but the movement caught her attention. Something was alive on one of the rocky little ice islands. A figure stood there.
Root flung himself at the rail. “It’s one of the others, they’re hurt—”
“No!” Spark caught him by the frills and kept him from leaping off the boat. “The wind was pushing them to the west when they left. That’s someone else.”
“You’re right.” Flicker perched up on the rail, squinting into the wind. “It looks like a groundling.”
Bramble turned and bolted for the steering cabin. “Niran! Diar!”
Bramble waited at the rail, trying to remember not to scrape at the deck with her claws. The wind pulled at her frills as Diar brought the wind-ship to a halt. Not far ahead, Spark and Flicker circled above the island, taking a closer look at the groundling who stood there. Flash was still up on the look-out post atop the tallest mast, on watch in case it was a trick. Spark had ordered Root to keep watch in the stern, and he had actually obeyed. Maybe the almost-fight had brought him back to his senses a little.
Bramble thought the presence of the groundling might be a trick. She had recognized the figure as the wind-ship had drawn closer, and it was either a trick or she was having some kind of hallucination.
Rorra came up beside her with a distance-glass. As she lifted it to study the island, Bramble said, “It’s Vendoin, isn’t it.”
Rorra lowered the glass. Her mouth was a grim line. “Yes. And she’s not armed.” Despite the wind, Bramble caught a trace of her communication scent, and filtered it out. It was a sure sign that Rorra was worried. The only sign, since Rorra kept her expression hard.
The island was just a rock, washed by ice-filled waves. There was no place to hide anything that Bramble could see. Vendoin wore only the light tunic that Hians seemed to prefer; there was no way to conceal even a small fire weapon in it.
Niran stepped up behind them, watching the scene with a frown. “Perhaps the small moss-craft fell, and the survivors washed up here.”