Then a wave of pain took Heart’s senses, and she saw—
—red light on a dark slate surface, fire washing against it, cracking, splintering, dissolving, falling—
Heart gasped in a breath. “It’s stopped, it’s stopped,” she managed.
“Are you sure?” Pearl’s voice said in her ear.
It had stopped and there was death behind them, across the plain. “Yes. They did it.” She had a clear image of Jade and Balm, falling back from an opening, and someone else, a strange groundling woman.
Pearl’s body jerked as she adjusted her course, and she called out to the warriors to stop. Floret and Sand and the others echoed her, then the unfamiliar voices of the Opal Night warriors.
Pearl landed and Heart lifted her head to find them crouched on the broad branch of a stunted mountain-tree. The birdsong and hum of insects and other life, silenced by their wild flight, was just starting to return. Pain coursed through Heart’s legs, her arms, her back, but it was fading. Their own warriors had landed on branches above and below, and near Pearl was Consolation and First. The Opal Night warriors and the half-Fell dakti and kethel were scattered through the group.
Pearl rose up a little, and said, “Floret? Is anyone hurt?”
On the next branch Floret pushed upright. She shook out her frills unsteadily, her claws gripping the bark. “Aura, Sand, Spring, Drift, Band, Coil, Fair . . . Who has Serene, I know she was hurt . . .”
“Coil’s dead,” Aura reported, her voice rough with shock.
Pearl hissed and Heart winced. Answering calls came as Rise tumbled down from the branch above and began collecting Opal Night warriors. The dakti chittered above them and a kethel rumbled.
Malachite dropped down onto the branch on the far side of Consolation. Consolation twitched and First flinched right off the branch, falling down to the one below. Pearl said, “What was that?”
“I don’t know.” Malachite’s spines didn’t move.
Pearl snarled, “You do know.”
Consolation looked from Pearl to Malachite and back, spines flicking.
“I have a suspicion,” Malachite admitted. “I need to see.” She jumped straight up to the branch above, then took flight up through the mountain-tree’s canopy.
“I hate you,” Pearl muttered, and followed her.
Heart shut her eyes as they hit the curtains of leaves in the upper canopy, then blinked as they came out into sunlight. Malachite lit on a bare curving limb stump that spiraled up out of the green sea of mountain-tree crowns. Pearl landed on the branch collar just below her. The blue sky curved over them and they had a view of the wetlands.
Malachite stared toward the east and Heart followed her gaze as Consolation belatedly scrambled up below them.
All over the wetlands, the dark shapes of Fell, some single and some in groups, were taking to the air and flying away. They moved slowly, like they were in pain. Like their joints and gut ached like Heart’s did. It wasn’t a coordinated effort, their courses were scattered, some directly east, some northeast, some south along the edge of the Reaches. They were fleeing in confusion.
Heart said, “Some of the Fell are dead. Maybe a lot of them.” The vision still lingered in her thoughts, and she could see bodies strewn in the weed-choked ponds and reed-grass. Her brow furrowed as she turned over a stray image, another body lying in a different field, the dry grass more yellow than green . . .
“But not the progenitor,” Malachite said. “She got away.”
“She’s just one progenitor,” Pearl said. “I’m sure we can find some dead ones for you out in the marshes—”
Malachite turned on her with a hiss. “She was the one who brought the others together. You don’t think she’ll blame us for this? She will regroup, with even more power now that other progenitors are dead. She will do this again.”
Pearl hissed. But below, Consolation said, “She’s right. I don’t want her to be right, but she’s right.”
Heart felt Pearl’s throat move in a soundless snarl. Pearl said flatly, “You want to follow her?”
“Yes.”
“And what if that happens again?” Pearl demanded. “Whatever it was?”
Heart touched the last image of the vision, the details scattering into dust as she tried to gather them. But the sense of finality was still there. “I don’t think it will. I’ll have to consult with the other mentors, but . . . I think it’s over.”
Pearl said, “Heart, keep your visions to yourself for the moment,” but her tone was more disgruntled than angry. She sounded exactly like herself. Shaken to her core by what had just happened, Heart hugged her in relief.
Pearl absently patted Heart’s head. She said to Malachite, “I can’t stop you from going. And I admit it’s exactly the sort of mad exploit you excel at.”
Malachite still stared toward the east. She looked down at Pearl. “I don’t need anyone to tell me to go. But perhaps I need you to tell me when to stop.”
Silence hung in the air, just the wind in the leaves and the distant cry of a cloud-walker. Consolation had climbed up far enough to watch them with more fascination than wariness. Heart suspected progenitors didn’t talk to each other like this. She was a little astonished to hear Pearl spoken to like this.
Pearl hissed out a breath of mingled exasperation and weariness. “Back to the colony first. We have wounded.”
Jade couldn’t stand to be near anyone but Balm.
The storm caused by the ruin’s fall had thrown the wind-ship some distance from the site of the structure’s final collapse. Now it was late afternoon and the sun warm on the deck as the clouds cleared and a column of smoke rose on the horizon. Jade stood at the rail, Balm beside her, a hand around her wrist as if Balm thought she needed to tie Jade to the deck. Maybe it was needed; Jade might have flown away, except her back muscles were strained from the effort to reach the wind-ship. She had shifted to her Arbora form, but it still felt like spikes had been jammed into her back.
This is what happened to Pearl, Jade thought. Even her secondhand experience with that devastation through Pearl’s connection to the court, even her own grief for Rain, was nothing to this. She suddenly understood Malachite all too well.
The warriors were exhausted, sick, injured when they had struggled out of the debris, and their two mentors weren’t in much better shape. She could hear muffled wailing from one of the belowdecks cabins. Jade should be taking care of them, instead of letting Bramble take charge. An Arbora, a hunter, who should never have been in this situation in the first place.
But she couldn’t make herself leave the rail. She was going to have to return to the Reaches and look at her clutch, at the three baby consorts that might grow up to have Moon’s eyes.
Behind her she heard soft steps on the deck, then Delin said, “Balm, can you tell Jade that Stone is flying ahead?”
That shocked Jade into movement. She turned. “Stone’s hurt.” He had had to dig their way out of the collapsing passage.
Delin’s brow was furrowed with concern. “Rorra cleaned and bandaged his hands. He said he doesn’t need them to fly.”
He shouldn’t go alone, Jade thought. She should go with him; she couldn’t fly but he could carry her. No, she couldn’t leave the warriors and Arbora now. Before she could think who to send with him, who wasn’t injured or exhausted, she felt the wind-ship tremble and Stone’s dark form dropped off the stern. He slid sideways and caught the wind, flapped for altitude and shot off toward the column of smoke in the distance.