“You’re wrong. He would never have let me leave.” Rift leaned forward urgently. “He would have made me take him to steal another seed.”
“Maybe.” But something about his expression told Moon that Rift had just thought of that convenient excuse. “He wasn’t afraid of you. He had his back to you.”
Rift hissed, glaring at him. “So you’ve never killed anyone by stealth? You’ve never had to, to survive?”
Moon snorted. It was almost funny. “I killed a Fell ruler by stealth. But that was a Fell.” It had made him a target and eventually brought the Fell to Indigo Cloud, but that was beside the point. “What’s it like to kill someone who trusts you?”
Rift snarled silently and looked away, but there was something false about the emotion behind it. Moon realized at that moment what had bothered him all along about Rift. Rift had been playing a part for him, just like the groundlings who acted out plays for the festival crowds in Kish. Just like Moon had pretended to be a groundling for all those turns. You saw through him, because he’s not any better at it than you are. That story that Rift had told, about being thrown out of his court because of a fight with another warrior, had been calculated to engender sympathy. Moon hadn’t believed it at the time, and it seemed less and less likely the more he spoke to Rift.
Groundlings had always been wary of Moon because somehow they had sensed he was lying to them, even if they weren’t sure why or what about. Now he knew just what that elusive sense of wrongness felt like.
For Moon, Rift had been playing the part of a poor lonely solitary who needed help, probably just a variation on the part he had played for Ardan, but more geared toward Raksuran sensibilities. The part he had played for the guards and the crew of the Klodifore, the groundlings he had been free to terrorize, was probably a lot closer to the real Rift. With considerably less patience, Moon said, “Just tell me why you did it.”
“I’ve told you why. He wouldn’t let me go.” Rift sounded more sulky than angry.
“After you told him I was a solitary, he offered to let me stay on the leviathan, if I didn’t want to go back with the court,” Moon said. “What did you tell him, about why you left your court?”
Rift tensed up again, his spines trembling. “I didn’t tell him anything.”
“If you’d lied to him to make him feel sorry for you, that wouldn’t have mattered. I lived with groundlings; everything I did and said was a lie. But what if you told him the truth, and you couldn’t take the chance that he’d tell us.” It was a guess, but Moon saw Rift’s whole body go rigid.
Rift bared his fangs. “You’re assuming I was planning to beg to join your court. From what I’ve heard, it’s so close to dying off, they had to take a solitary as a consort.”
Moon didn’t take the bait, but it made him more certain he was on the right trail. “No, I’m assuming you want to find another group of Raksura to get close to, because you’re tired of killing groundlings.”
Rift’s expression was more amused than anything else. He said, “They’re just groundlings.”
“Arbora are just groundlings who can shift. Is that who you killed at your old court, until they figured it out?”
Rift shook his head, still amused, then lunged for Moon. Moon had been waiting for that. He ducked away from Rift’s clawed swipe, and punched him in the face hard enough to stun him. Then he caught his throat and slammed him down on his back. Low and close to his ear, Moon said, “Better stick with helpless groundlings, and leave feral consorts alone.”
Rift whimpered, such a patently false manipulation that Moon almost tore his throat out right there. Rift said, “I’ll go. You’ll never see me again.”
“If I do, you’re dead.” Moon dragged him upright and tossed him away, further into the forest. Rift tumbled into a crouch, threw one last look back, then bolted away into the trees.
Moon turned back toward the others, only just now realizing they were all gathered on the grassy beach, watching him. Even Stone had dropped back out of the tree and stood there in groundling form.
Root said, “I’m confused. I thought Rift was a nice solitary, like Moon.”
Song clapped a hand over her eyes in embarrassment. Vine told Root, “Remember how I told you you weren’t allowed to talk anymore?”
Root hissed at him, but Moon ignored all the byplay. Jade seemed concerned, and he doubted it was because of the aborted fight. She said, “Should I ask?”
Moon shrugged, rippled his spines to take the tension out of his back. “Balm was right.”
Jade looked at Balm, who shrugged too. She said, “I just said that that solitary was not like him.”
Jade flicked her spines in acknowledgement, and smiled at her. “Good.” She turned to the others. “Go now, if you want to get back before dark.”
The group reluctantly broke up. Balm took Chime’s wrist and led him away, saying, “We’ll build a fire and make tea.” Moon could see River struggling with the urge to make a comment, and the knowledge that Jade would probably not react well to it and that he was still several days away from Pearl’s protection. He finally looped an arm around Drift’s neck and hauled him away.
“Are you going to say ‘I told you so’?” Moon asked Stone. Stone rolled his eyes and turned to go back to his tree.
Jade stepped up to Moon. As he shifted to groundling, she put an arm around his waist and pulled him against her. Keeping her voice low, she said, “I know that was hard.”
He leaned his forehead against hers. It had been hard, even knowing what Rift was really like. “He wasn’t who I hoped he was.”
Chapter Nineteen
Moon and Jade saw Stone off at dawn the next morning, while the warriors slept in a little longer. From the wide branch of the mountain tree, they could see the rising sun reflecting rose and gold off the wispy clouds. It would be another good day for flying.
Stone stretched extravagantly, yawned, and told Jade, “Don’t think I don’t know why you’re sending me ahead.”
Jade nodded. “So Pearl can take it out on you instead of us.”
Moon knew they were right, but he couldn’t help saying, “We got the seed back. What kind of sense does that make?”
“Sense doesn’t enter into it where queens are concerned,” Stone told him. He jerked his head at Jade. “Get used to it.”
Jade folded her arms, regarding him deliberately. “Please. Coming from you, that’s funny.” She hesitated, her gaze on the pack that held the urn and the carefully bundled seed. “Don’t let Pearl hold Flower’s farewell until we get there.”
Stone shouldered the bulky pack without apparent effort, though with the urn it was almost four paces tall. He said, “I won’t.” With that, he walked to where the branch sloped down, and jumped off. He shifted in mid-fall, snapped his wings out to catch the air and flapped to stay aloft, hard wingbeats taking him away through the forest.
Watching him vanish in the green shadows, Moon realized he didn’t even know what Raksura did with their dead. He knew from what the others had said that the bodies at the old colony had been burned inside the ruin, with the Fell dragged out and left for predators along the river bank, but he didn’t know what the normal practice was. He said, “What’s going to happen at Flower’s farewell?”
He hadn’t phrased the question particularly well, but Jade understood what he meant. “At the old colony, we buried our dead in the gardens. But here… The histories said that there’s a place down in the roots of the tree for burials of Arbora and warriors. They used to put the royal Aeriat inside the wood itself, somehow, and made the tree grow over them. I don’t think we know how to make that happen anymore.”