Beside him, Niran said grimly, “That’s one messy death averted.”
“One down, how many to go?” Flash wondered.
Someone yelled from further down the deck and Chime whirled around. Lien hung over the rail and pointed frantically. “There! I saw wings!”
Chime reached her in one bound and gripped the rail so tightly his claws scored it. He spotted the movement among the swirling debris immediately. It was in the lower part of the structure, where a whole section with attached petals had just sheared off. “It’s them! There!”
From the bow, Niran called directions to Diar. The wind-ship angled down but Chime doubted it could get any closer.
Bramble and Lithe stood on the rail beside Chime, while Flash helped Niran and the other Golden Islanders with the winch. At the steering cabin wall, Tlar was attaching more harnesses. Chime realized Kalam was beside him. He said, “The direction is wrong for the rope.”
Distracted, Chime looked toward the bow, thinking about the angle of the wind. “Right, we have to get around the other side—”
Bramble tensed. “Maybe not! That’s Stone!”
She was right, it was Stone, his dark shape fighting its way out of the flying debris.
Chime tightened his grip on the railing, watching as Stone’s wings beat powerfully up away from the docks. “He doesn’t see us! He’s going the wrong way,” Kalam said in alarm.
“No,” Flash corrected him before Chime could, “he’s following the wind, he’s going to use it to get around the docks and back to us—Here he comes!”
Stone hurtled toward the wind-ship and everyone on deck scrambled to make room, either plastering themselves against the rail or flinging themselves through the nearest doorway. The wind-ship had closed its masts to protect the sails from the wind, and Stone swept in and caught one, curled his body around it. The warriors clinging to his body scrambled down. Deft lost his grip and tumbled. Flash hissed in alarm and leapt straight up to pluck him out of the air. Bramble and Lithe grabbed Flash’s harness line to reel them back in.
Balm, with Merit tucked under her arm, bounced off the cabin roof and Chime leapt to catch her. They landed on the deck in a heap. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dark shape with Rorra clutched against its chest swing down from the roof, and his head swam with relief. But when he pushed up on his arms, he saw it was Shade, not Moon.
Above, Stone shifted to groundling, Jade caught him, and climbed down the mast to the cabin. The wind-ship’s deck swayed as Diar turned it away from the docks and the flying debris.
Chime pushed up away from Balm and Merit, and found himself facing Jade. “Where’s Moon?” he asked.
She met his gaze, and the raw despair in her expression froze his heart.
Then the wind-ship shook, the wind stopped abruptly, and they were floating over an open grassy plain. In the distance a cloud rose as the docks collapsed and fell to the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It took time to set the trap, and Heart had spent most of it with various people trying to talk her out of participating. Finally the Arbora finished making their preparations at the site, and now Vine and Sage waited with Heart at the half-Fell camp.
Consolation had sent three dakti to take the message to the progenitor. When all three returned, Heart saw the relief that swept through the flight. The other dakti, the big hulking kethel looming around in the back of the camp, even the rulers had been afraid they wouldn’t come back alive. “They are different,” Heart said quietly to Vine.
Malachite and Pearl had already gone ahead with the others to set the trap. It was late afternoon, well before nightfall, and they were hoping the progenitor would be overconfident. Vine flicked his spines and said, “It’s unnerving.”
Sage added, “Everything about this is unnerving.”
Heart couldn’t disagree.
Consolation spoke to the dakti, then came toward Heart and the warriors. As they pushed to their feet, she said, “It’s done. She will come to the meeting. So we should go. I’ll carry you.”
“I know,” Heart said. She made her spines neutral and her voice hard. It was the only way she was going to get through this. She felt the warriors’ tension behind her. “It was what we decided.”
“But you should be a soft skin,” Consolation added. “It would look better.”
Heart eyed her. “Why would I do that?”
“I might make you.” Consolation scratched the skin under her scales almost diffidently. “It might be better if the progenitor thinks so.”
“Can you make me?” Heart asked, trying not to flex her claws. If Consolation could, it would be like a nightmare repeat of the attack on Indigo Cloud’s old eastern colony.
“I can make the rulers change,” Consolation admitted. “Not the others. But the progenitor won’t know that.”
Heart didn’t want any part of a Fell touching her groundling skin, but it made sense. She shifted, flowing into her groundling form. She had worn work clothes, a plain shirt and pants in a gold brown fabric, the hems stamped with designs in a lighter pigment, and some copper bracelets. The dakti nearby stared at her as if they had never seen anything like her before. Heart bared her teeth at them.
“Most of them haven’t seen Arbora before, not close,” Consolation said. She looked at the dakti and said, “They have seen now and are over their surprise.”
The dakti took the hint and stirred, all looking in different directions. Heart stepped forward and let Consolation lift her up. Vine and Sage followed them, but broke off to wait on the branch of a last mountain-tree as the Fell and Heart flew out of the Reaches.
The place they had chosen was in the wetlands, though still within sight of the rampart of mountain-trees. The apparently empty spot was a low mound surrounded by a scatter of large rocks, the whole covered with a heavy carpet of grasses and flowers. From the shapes and the position of the boulders Heart knew that it was the foundations of a ruin. The stretch of open water nearby had an outline that was too regular, though it was softened by the water plants that clustered thickly along the edges.
One kethel coiled itself on the lower part of the mound behind Heart, and two others retreated a distance to keep watch.
It had been a while since Heart had been outside the Reaches. The sun felt good on her groundling skin, sinking down into her scalp and her bare arms, but the open sky made her feel exposed in a way it hadn’t before.
Consolation talked to, or maybe consulted with, the dakti for a time, then began to pace absently in a circle in the middle of the mound. The dakti spread out over the ruin, some taking up positions behind Heart, as if preventing her from running away. But one sat next to her, its scales scraping on the moss.
It was part of the group that always seemed to stay near the Fell queen. Heart eyed it sideways, and said, “If you touch me, I can make the grass you’re sitting on burn through your scales.” Then I’ll rip your face off, she added mentally.
The dakti held up its hands, claws partially retracted. “No touching.” Its voice was rough and husky, more so than when shifted Aeriat spoke, as if its throat and mouth hadn’t been designed for talking. “You’re a mentor.”
“Yes. What are you?”
It shifted. Heart had seen dakti in groundling form, usually dead ones, and they could be mistaken for Raksura. They were usually covered with dirt and grime and sores, which disguised the paleness of their groundling skin from a distance, and could make them look like an Arbora with a lighter complexion. Their hair was dark and straight like a ruler’s, without any of the variations in color and texture common to Raksuran bloodlines. Their features looked like a carving someone had forgotten to finish, their eyes flat and dark.