Ceilinel turned to Doyen, who looked away. Gathin lifted a hand and said, “No, but they are members of the Imperial Agreement.”
Moon didn’t know what that meant, except that no one was going to believe his side of the story, no matter how well a speaker told it. He got up to go back to his cell.
He had passed through the doorway, and Doyen clearly thought he was out of earshot, when it said, “He should be restrained, Ceilinel. If he kills you all, you will be to blame.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Moon waited for armed groundlings to show up and drag him away to a more secure cage, or possibly just to chain him up here. But no one came, and eventually he fell asleep.
He slept off and on through the night, waking in the late morning to the scent of more food in the outer room. After he ate, he took the Kish history book and left his cell to explore some more.
He avoided the chambers on the upper level where the faint sounds of movement and voices indicated that Ceilinel and at least two or three other groundlings were present. The wind had changed direction, so he found a lattice window on the opposite side of the tower from the gallery, and attached another piece of bandage to an unobtrusive spot. Moon didn’t know if it was possible to trace a Raksura by scent in a groundling city this size, even with the help of cloth soaked with sweat and piss. But he knew how acute Stone’s senses could be. If Stone was still alive.
He found a sitting room with latticed windows looking out onto the market structure. Beyond it was a canyon formed by domed buildings lining what seemed to be a major street. The room had cushioned benches and couches centered around another shallow floor pool, but Moon carried a cushion over and took a seat in the corner of the wide windowsill.
As the afternoon light deepened across the city, Moon slept off and on, and read the book while keeping an eye on the bridges and walkways. Large numbers of people came and went from the market. He couldn’t see much of the inside, just occasional glimpses of bolts of gleaming fabric or tall urns and large pieces of pottery.
He tried to keep his attention on the book, tried not to think about where the others were or what might be happening in the Reaches. There were no maps in the text, but there was a description of the principal cities of Kish and their relations with each other, which told him where Kish-Karad was well enough to plan a rough route back to the Reaches, if he had to escape on his own. Or if Ceilinel kept her word and released him.
Finally the sunset washed the domes with gold, and lights began to gleam on the streets and bridges. The hanging bronze lamps in the room and the attached hall began to glow. During the day at least three groundlings had come to the door to peer at him and then retreat, probably to report to Ceilinel. The next one who came was Vata, and she said, “Ah, excuse me, but Ceilinel has asked to speak to you.”
Moon sat up and folded the book back into its cover, taking one last glance out at the market. This time his eye was caught by a stillness in the river of movement on the walkway along the lowest level. A lone figure stood in a patch of fading sunlight, a tall shape in the kind of loose robe groundling traders from the southern drylands wore. The scarf wrapped around its head was a gold pattern, very like the one Niran wore to protect his hair on the wind-ship. Most groundlings sitting where Moon was wouldn’t be able to see that much detail at this distance, and the figure standing there shouldn’t be able to see Moon.
Moon set the book on the bench and pushed to his feet, as flushed and weak as when he had woken the first time. Hope was painful. He might be mistaken or hallucinating. He had seen more groundlings of different species stroll along that walkway this afternoon than he had ever seen in one place in his entire life; some of them were bound to be the size of an Aeriat and wear head scarfs like the Golden Islanders. It might actually be an unusually tall Golden Islander.
He took a deep breath, got his expression under control, and pushed away from the window to go to Ceilinel.
Vata led him to a room off the upper level gallery, where another groundling was helping Ceilinel into a robe with a lot more brocade than the one she had been wearing before. Ceilinel sent that groundling away and turned to a polished metal mirror to brush back her feathery hair. She said, “I’ve been called to the speakers’ assembly and it will be better if you come with me. If the Hians present any claims tonight, Gathin may need to ask you more questions.”
Moon hesitated, most of his attention still focused on that waiting figure near the market. Maybe leaving the house right now, giving himself another chance to be seen, wasn’t a bad idea. “So you believe me?”
“My duty in this dispute is to find out the truth of what happened and I intend to do that.” She turned and gestured at him. “Is it acceptable to your people for you to appear in public like this?”
Moon looked down at himself. He was dressed about the same as some of the other groundlings in the house, so it didn’t worry him. She wanted the truth, so he said, “My people will be so furious at a consort being held prisoner by groundlings that it really doesn’t matter what I’m wearing.”
Ceilinel’s brows twitched in a way he wanted to interpret as annoyance. “Well, I’ll deal with that when—”
Moon lost the rest. A cry of pain and a crash of wood and metal sounded from somewhere below the house. He tilted his head, turning toward the noise, and tasted the air. “Something’s happened.”
Ceilinel and Vata stared at him. They clearly hadn’t heard it. Ceilinel demanded, “What is it?”
The draft had just changed. A door had opened somewhere. And the air carried a metallic taint. That was Stone, he’s breaking into the house . . . Except that didn’t make sense. If that was Stone, he had seen Moon sitting in a window reading. He would have waited until deep in the night and then tried to get close enough to speak to him. There was no point in attacking a place Moon might have been able to walk out of on his own. Unless Jade was with him and she was just that mad . . .
Then he caught the acrid scent of a Kish fire weapon. He snarled and ducked out of the room to the gallery. The big chamber below was empty but just beyond it he heard cries of alarm and the roar of more than one fire weapon.
Ceilinel and Vata ran to the railing beside him. From their reaction, this time they heard the screams. “It’s the Hians,” Moon told Ceilinel. The Hians who were so determined to conceal their part in the deaths outside Kedmar, who knew there was a surviving Raksura to be dealt with. “Unless you can fight them with magic, you have to let me shift.”
Ceilinel snapped, “Vata, run, hide.” As Vata darted away along the gallery, she told Moon, “Follow her. She can show you a place to—”
Moon said again, “You need to let me shift or they’ll kill us both.” He tried to keep the desperation out of his voice. The idea of being burned by one of those weapons again was a cold lump of fear inside his chest.
Impatiently, she said, “They wouldn’t dare—”
Wooden disks struck the balustrade. Moon grabbed Ceilinel’s arm and dragged her with him as he flung himself back against the wall. She cried out and Moon managed not to yelp as the burst of heat and flame washed over the stone railing. “That was aimed at you,” he snarled. “Now do you believe—”
Ceilinel tugged at a cord around her neck and pulled it out from under her collar. It supported a small stone, polished to a dull red. Looking at it seemed to still the air around Moon, as if the little object took up all the open space in the chamber. She snapped the cord and dropped the stone on the floor, then stamped on it.