Balm clamped onto the pillar with her claws and gasped, “I’m all right.” She shook her spines out as Jade carefully released her. “Are we moving?”
“Yes.” The whole shaft, maybe the whole structure, was rotating, Jade felt it in her gut and the back of her head. She called up to River and Saffron, “Where are Moon and the others?”
River said, “They were above us.” He turned and craned his neck to look up. “I think they were still near the top.”
The constriction in Jade’s chest eased a little. She said, “Saffron, can you get up there and see if the shaft is blocked?”
Saffron’s spines signaled assent as she swung past River and started to climb.
None of the others seemed hurt. River set Deft on the pillar next to him, keeping a hand on his arm as the dazed warrior recovered. Stone curled around the pillar to set Briar on a perch. Merit climbed up his shoulder to hop over and sit next to her. Then Stone flowed up the pillar, following Saffron.
Jade watched him go, every nerve tight.
“You think the Hians did this, made it start moving?” Balm hooked her claws on their perch and leaned out to look down.
With effort, Jade made her voice sound even and ordinary. “They must have. This wasn’t a coincidence.” Below the shaft narrowed again, the pillars twisting towards each other, forming more of a climbing structure. The Hians had to be using their flying packs, which meant they had been able to move down through here almost as quickly as Raksura could.
Balm hissed in realization. “Delin said the Hians had magic that could make rock move. These walls don’t feel like stone, but—”
Jade wanted to groan aloud and managed not to. “They caused this, they know we’re here.”
From above, Saffron called down, “Part of the wall came off, and it’s wedged into the narrow part of the shaft. There’s a lot of broken pieces around it. The line-grandfather is trying to push it free.” A clanking noise echoed from above and a scatter of debris rained down. Saffron spread her wings and dropped to a pillar closer to Jade and Balm so she could lower her voice. “I didn’t see or scent anyone. There’s no sign anyone was in there when it happened.”
Meaning she hadn’t seen or scented any sign of blood or smashed bodies. Jade took a full breath to calm her pounding heart and moved her spines in acknowledgement. Moon wasn’t crushed in the wall collapse, and Chime, Shade, and Lithe were with him. If there was any group of Raksura who could take care of themselves in a strange situation, it was them.
Balm stretched to look up, twitching back as more debris clattered down into the pillar. “Maybe we could use the fire weapons, but—Do we have time?”
“We could split up,” River contributed from above. “Some of us stay here and try to dig out . . .”
Jade flexed her claws as she considered it. We could already be too late. The Hians were somewhere below them about to use the weapon. And they already know we’re here. “We have to go on. Stone!”
After a couple of thumps and more debris, Stone dropped out of the shaft, caught the pillar above Briar’s perch, and wrapped himself around it. He shifted to his groundling form and said, “I can’t get through, not in a hurry.”
Jade twitched her spines in acknowledgement. “We’ll find another way out, once we stop the Hians. Briar, Deft, can you fly?”
Deft said, “Yes, queen, I’m all right,” and unfurled his wings to prove it.
“Yes, Jade.” Briar spread her wings cautiously, then picked up Merit.
“Then come on,” Jade said, and dropped down the shaft.
Chime jolted forward and Moon grabbed a flailing arm to pull him back to their perch. The wheel shuddered like the whole ship was about to come apart.
Moon pulled himself to the upper rim. From there he had a view past the sail. As the whole docking structure turned, dragging the ship with it, clouds formed overhead. Below the water and ice chunks swirled into a vortex. He thought of the whirlpool that had pulled the sunsailer out of the foundation builder city. “This could be bad,” he said.
“You think?” Chime gasped, then levered himself up a little to look. “Oh. Oh no, not again! No, wait.” He hesitated, just as Moon felt the change in altitude in his stomach and the back of his neck. “We’re moving down!”
From below, Lithe said, “This has to be the weapon. It’s doing this!”
“We’re not dead yet,” Shade pointed out. “We still have time.” The wheel jerked again and he added, “Maybe.”
Kethel climbed up the wheel but stopped several paces below Lithe and Shade. Moon didn’t think it was his imagination that it looked anxious.
I need to see what’s happening below us, Moon thought. He let go of the wheel and stood up, clamping his foot claws to hold on. The wind gusted hard and he swayed with the motion but from this angle he could see the docking structure had moved down, pulling the ship with it. Below, the gray water churned, but there was something beneath it, something blue.
Sky blue, he thought, and caught a glimpse of brown and gold. Grass, a grass plain. A groundling might not have been able to see it, but Raksuran eyes identified it as a grass plain, seen from a great height. “It’s a passage!” A massive jolt went through the ship and metal groaned, the wind rose to a shriek. The wheel shuddered again and Chime grabbed Moon’s leg as he swayed. “It’s a passage through the air.” Moon dropped to a crouch to steady himself. “It’s making an opening to someplace else, someplace below us, maybe so the Hians can use the weapon.” That had to be it.
Chime’s spines flicked in consternation. “That makes sense, sort of. Bramble said that they might need to be up high for the weapon to reach all the way out to the east. Like if you drop a rock from a height the—”
“I got it,” Moon said. He just didn’t know what to do about it. Something the Hians had done below was making the ship open a magical passage in the air. And if Jade and the others were dead down in the shaft, or trapped there . . .
Then Shade said, “We have to stop it, or—Can we move the ship? Make it drag the docks back up? Or maybe push it down to the ground, so the weapon can’t get all the way to the Reaches or Kish.”
“Yes! That might work.” Chime steadied himself on Moon’s arm and lifted up to a tentative crouch. “We need to find a steering cabin.”
Moon gripped Chime’s hand, anchoring him so Chime could stand. He tightened his hold on the rim and Chime as the ship jolted again and the wind pushed at them.
Shade had eased to his feet, trying to see. Then Lithe climbed down toward Kethel, ordering it, “Lift me up!”
Moon yelled, “Lithe, don’t—” Shade snarled, “Lithe, no—”
Lithe yelled, “Quiet, both of you!” Kethel swung up toward her, clambered atop the wheel, and clamped on with its foot claws and tail. It closed one hand carefully around Lithe and lifted her up.
Chime dropped back beside Moon, and said, “She has to—I couldn’t see anything.” He added nervously, “I’m just glad I didn’t think of it first.”
Moon was too busy wrestling with his instinctive urge to go rip the kethel’s eyes out. Shade’s low frustrated growls said he felt the same.
Lithe scrambled up atop Kethel’s hand as high as she could. The wind made her frills flare out. Both she and the kethel swayed as the ship spun even faster. They leaned far to one side and Chime made a faint squeak of alarm.