Kethel dropped down the stairwell and Moon swung down to follow. Chime called out after him, sounding desperate. Moon’s throat tightened and he didn’t answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jade led the way down as the shaft curved into another passage. The twisted pillars made climbing possible despite the motion that pushed her toward the walls. The jostling was deceptively easy to compensate for, but Jade hadn’t forgotten that first jolt. She looked back to Stone not far behind her, and asked, “If it feels like this in here, what’s it like outside?”
His claws hooked into Stone’s collar flange, Merit admitted reluctantly, “Bad. We’re at the center here, and protected. Outside . . . the dock might be tearing itself apart.”
“Moon can take care of the others,” Balm said, as she climbed along below Jade. “And they have a mentor with them.”
“Shade’s tougher than he seems,” Saffron added.
Jade knew she should agree and pretend to be less worried, but she couldn’t make herself say the words. She told herself to focus on finding the Hians. If they didn’t do that, then it wouldn’t matter what happened outside.
Then Stone flicked at her spines with one big claw. She stopped and tasted the air again. She hadn’t been able to scent anything so far, just dry cold air tainted with metal. But now there was a trace of a familiar scent: the Kishan moss.
Jade signaled the others to move more cautiously, and started forward again.
At the next twisted pillar, she found a scraped off chunk of moss. At least they weren’t on the wrong trail.
Further ahead, the shaft narrowed, but the quality of the light was different, more diffuse. “It opens out down there,” Balm said, keeping her voice low.
As they moved into the larger space, Jade motioned for the others to stay back. She crept ahead.
The shaft ended in a large chamber where one pillar twisted around and formed a ladder-like climbing structure all the way down to the floor below. The chamber was more dimly lit, full of shadows, mostly bare except for the embossed wall panels. Jade spotted an open doorway in the wall, with something around it, some ornamental carving . . . And three Hians. Jade hissed in satisfaction.
Two had the smaller hand-carried fire weapons. The groundlings were always overconfident with those. And one was unarmed. Except that one stood with her hands out, eyes closed in concentration. The other two had their gazes locked on the shaft above them, obviously waiting for an attack.
The unarmed one has the magic, Jade thought. That had to be it. That Hian was waiting for the other two to sight the Raksura, and she was going to collapse the shaft again.
Balm, Saffron, and Briar had eased up beside Jade, River and Deft hanging back with Stone. Jade glanced at the three female warriors, gestured toward each of the three Hians in turn, and got spine twitches of assent. Then Jade rocked up on her heels and flung herself out of the shaft with the force of every muscle in her body.
A twist compensated for the rotation of the chamber and she hit the unarmed Hian with her foot claws before the others knew she was there. Jade slammed her to the ground, her claws cutting through the flying pack harness to contract around the Hian’s throat.
Balm hit the next and the Hian’s flying pack went one way and her head the other. The third lifted her weapon to fire at Briar and Saffron crashed into her from the side and slammed her into the wall next to the doorway.
That was when Jade saw the fourth Hian, who stood in the darkened space on the other side of the door. Jade crouched to leap but the Hian didn’t lift her weapon, she reached to the side—
—and the rippled carving around the door began to spiral out and close.
With a snarl, Jade flung herself forward but she hit the closed door and bounced off the surface. Staring at it, she hissed in dismayed fury. The decorative border was made of petals formed of a hard white material, and now that it was closed, it looked like a huge flower. It was a forerunner door.
Beside her, Balm growled. “Is that—”
“Yes.” Jade ran her hands over it, the material soft but impervious under her scales. There was no catch, no place to pry at it.
She felt the change in the air behind her as Stone shifted to his groundling form. He stepped up beside her and tried to work his hand between the petals in the center. He shook his head. “It’s not there,” he said, his voice grim.
“It’s meant to open only for forerunners,” Merit was telling the warriors. “The one we found before had a place where you could trigger the catch, Lithe and Chime figured out how to open it, but this one doesn’t seem to have that.”
“How did the stupid Hians open it—” River began, then answered his own question. “The weapon. It let them in because of the weapon.”
Jade snarled again and slammed her fist against the impervious petals. This was why they had brought Shade, across half the continent, to open any sealed forerunner doors. And now she had no idea where he was, or even if he and Moon were still alive.
Kethel waited for Moon at the doorway, the wind tearing at his raveled braids. Moon’s feelings toward Kethel were too complicated to sort out, but he had to warn him. He said, “You don’t have to come. If the others can’t stop it, we probably won’t be able to help.”
Kethel said, “I don’t want to live without her and the others,” and lunged out into the wind.
Moon climbed after him, up the stairs curving around the outside of the steering cabin. The cold cleared his head but the wind nearly tore him off the rungs. Ice pellets stung his scales and the shriek of metal tearing sounded like the ship was dying in terrible pain. Kethel shifted to its winged form and held out a clawed hand. Moon leapt to reach it, then scrambled up to just behind the horns on Kethel’s head.
From here, Moon had a better view, not that it was encouraging. Walls of water stretched up all around them, the surface churning with storm waves. The metal ship skewed sideways, creating a vortex of air as the flower of the docking structure still rotated on its axis. Far below, through an obscuring haze of windblown water, Moon caught glimpses of the brown-yellow plain in bright sunlight. He had no idea what would happen once the docking structure got down there, and he didn’t want to find out.
Kethel leapt down to the next wheel and the wind almost sent it off the ship toward the water wall. Moon flattened himself to its scales, trying not to throw off its balance. Kethel landed and scrabbled to get hold of the wheel, then climbed down toward the bulbous towers below. With some protection from the wind, Kethel made its way toward the bow.
They reached the point where the twisted skeins of cables connecting the ship to the dock were stretched tight. Moon wondered if it would help to break them, to set the ship loose. No, it would probably just help the Hians, he realized. Dragging the ship might be slowing the structure’s motion, buying them time.
One of the leaf-shaped pods extended out over the cables. Kethel braced itself, then leapt for it.
Moon ducked down again to reduce the wind interference, for all the good that did. Gusts slammed into them like boulders and Kethel’s claws scraped across the silvery surface. Then it caught hold and dragged itself up.
Moon flattened himself behind Kethel’s horns to hold on, the wind singing in his spines, ice crystals peppering his scales like pebbles. As Kethel climbed, Moon realized the motion seemed to lessen, and when the wind eased, he lifted his head. Moon was so dazed by the constant pressure and sound that it took him a moment to realize that Kethel had just heaved itself over the outer edge of the central shaft and started down. Moon blinked and shook his head, the feathery protective membrane around his eyes reluctant to open fully with all the flying ice in the air.