Rorra stepped forward to peer down the shaft. “I want the best angle I can get. Can you hold me out over it?”
Jade wrapped her arm around Rorra’s waist and crouched. She leaned down and caught the top bar, and dangled Rorra directly over the shaft. The others gathered around.
Then below, someone shouted in Kedaic, “They’re above us!”
Jade hissed, “Now!”
Rorra swung the weapon up and pulled the first trigger. Wooden disks shot out and clattered against the stone surface below. Jade heard thumps as something struck the wall beside them. It was the Hians shooting up at them. But Rorra hit the second trigger and the shaft below disappeared in a wash of fire.
Rorra held the trigger down, fire flowing out of the weapon, her face a grimace of effort. Then the fire slowed and cut off. Rorra gasped, “That’s it!”
Jade hauled her up and dragged them both out of the shaft. Stone caught Rorra’s arm and pulled her away and Jade rolled onto the floor. Balm hissed with alarm and wiped something off Jade’s shoulder. She held her palm out, eyes wide. It was a wooden disk. Jade hissed and looked at Rorra in time to see Stone pluck one off her forehead.
River and Shade leaned over the shaft, trying to angle for a view. Saffron grabbed Shade’s frills and bodily hauled him back, snarling, “Careful!”
River reported tensely, “The slab’s still there. I didn’t see any difference.”
Jade held her breath to keep from snarling with fury. Rorra spat out a curse in Kedaic and reached for her pack again.
From below, a voice shouted in Altanic, “Raksura, we have your consort Moon here. If you stop, we will leave him alive.”
Jade went still, rage and terror constricting her chest. Stone’s furious growl vibrated through the floor. Rorra, jamming a new canister into the stock of the weapon, froze.
“She’s lying,” Balm whispered, aghast. “He’s not down there.”
River looked at Merit and started to speak, then let the question die as he registered the expression of horrified resignation on Merit’s face.
Jade twitched her spines in a negative. Of course the Hian wasn’t lying. For all Moon knew, we were dead in here, she thought in anguish. Of course he would look for another way in, would try to get to the Hians.
Stone grated out the words, “She’s not lying.”
The warriors all stared at Jade. She forced her jaw to unlock and made herself say to Rorra, “Go on. We’ll try again.” We have to, she didn’t say, they’ll kill us all, they’ll kill the Reaches. It was effort enough to get those words out and if she tried to say more her control would shatter.
She saw Balm’s throat work, but Balm didn’t protest. Shade’s spines wilted in despair.
Rorra jerked her head in assent, fixed the canister into the weapon. From below, the Hian said, her voice more urgent, “Your Fell ally is here too. Stop and we will spare them both.”
Stone hissed and pressed his hand over his eyes. Jade didn’t understand. Fell ally . . . Then she snarled under her breath. The Kethel. It was more proof the Hian wasn’t lying. Rorra grimaced in dismay and pushed upright again. She looked at Jade and nodded.
Jade took a sharp breath. The Hians were ready for them so there would be no other chance, no matter how many canisters of moss Rorra had brought with her. Jade caught her around the waist. Rorra lifted the weapon as Jade fell forward and swung them both out over the opening.
The fire from Rorra’s weapon filled the shaft. This time Jade felt a vibration through the climbing bar, a reverberation as though something large had snapped. The fire ceased and Rorra shouted, “That’s it!”
Jade dragged them both back, her burden lifting as Stone pulled Rorra out of her grip.
Then the whole room jolted and Jade hit the opposite wall, Balm on top of her. The floor rippled like a wave moved through it. The structure’s steady downward motion turned into a headlong plunge. Beside her, Balm gasped, “You did it!”
Jade pushed away from the wall. “We need to—” Above her head, with a sound like screaming, the walls started to come apart.
Chime kept searching the cabin with Lithe, looking for symbols, looking for anything. Feeling the groove along one of the lower windows, and thinking how odd it would be for anyone, even a mysterious forerunner, to put something needed to steer the ship there, Chime hissed at himself in sudden realization. He sat back on his heels and told Lithe, “We’re doing this wrong. This is forerunner, and we’re treating it like the foundation builder city.”
On the opposite side of the chamber, Lithe turned, her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Chime waved his hands. “We shouldn’t be looking for symbols. There weren’t any in the other forerunner places I’ve seen.”
Lithe considered it, her spines flicking in thought. Then she stood and stepped to the center of the room, facing Chime. “Maybe that’s because the forerunners don’t need symbols. Maybe they were all like mentors.”
Chime thought it was the only real option. “So you should try to . . . find their magic.” The chances that they could control anything the structure was doing from here were dim, but at least they could try. “Try to think ‘stop.’”
Lithe shook her head. “I’ve been trying that already, since we first got in here, but I don’t have the right kind of magic. You do.”
Chime’s spines flicked in frustration. “I don’t, I’m not a mentor any—”
“You do,” Lithe said. “I’ve seen it.” Chime shook his head, dropped his spines to a negative, but Lithe didn’t stop. “You’ve got magic, Chime. Turning into a warrior didn’t take it away, it just changed it. Just try.”
Chime dug in, stubborn. “My abilities are—I can only hear strange things—”
With the firm patience of a good mentor, Lithe said “Strange magical things. Everybody in Indigo Cloud knows you have it, they’re just confused because you keep explaining how it’s not good for anything. Just try.”
Chime hesitated. “It didn’t work in the foundation builder city. I mean, it opened the door so we could get in . . .”
“From what Kalam said, those symbols were probably meant for forerunners, coming to the city after the foundation builders left. Whoever built the rest of this ship, this steering cabin is forerunner,” Lithe said. “Just try.”
Chime had thought of about three other uses this place could have besides steering cabin, but outside this bubble of calm he could sense the ship’s movement getting faster and faster, and they didn’t have time to look for another option. With the wind risen to terrible strength, he was terrified of what was happening to the others.
Lithe took his wrist and squeezed gently. Her claws were different than an ordinary Arbora’s, longer and thinner, like an Aeriat’s. It was a reminder that she was half-Fell, and it surprised him that he had forgotten, that at some point the darkness of her scales just meant that she was Lithe, and not anything else. She said, “It’s just the two of us, Chime. If you try and nothing happens, I won’t blame you and we won’t tell anybody.”
She didn’t add that if no one could stop the weapon, there wouldn’t be anybody to tell, and that they probably wouldn’t be around any more to talk. Chime took a deep breath and pushed those terrifying thoughts away. He stepped to the wall and put his hand on it, hoping the symbolic connection to the ship would help. “Think ‘stop,’ right,” he muttered. He pressed his eyes closed.
For a long time there was nothing, not even the drifting sensation that he had felt when they found the right symbols on the foundation builder city’s door. There was nothing else to do so Chime kept trying. Please stop, he thought toward the ship and through it the docks. Reaching toward them, the way you needed to reach into someone’s head to look for Fell influence.