Moon partly extended his wings and leapt up to land on the railing, careful not to score the newly polished wood with his claws. Chime landed after him and headed down to the stern toward Blossom and Bead.
Jade stood on the deck, speaking to Niran. “I want to thank you again for helping us,” she said. “If you hadn’t, we would never have made it here.” She stood out, even among the brightly colored Arbora crowded around. As a queen she was larger, stronger, with a silver-gray web pattern over her scales. Her mane of frills and spines reached all the way down her back to the base of her tail. Her only clothing was a broad necklace and belt with silver chains linking polished opals.
Niran shook his head, a little self-conscious. He was about the size of an Arbora, but slimly built, with gold-colored skin and long straight white hair. He had distrusted the Raksura at first, but forced proximity and shared danger had brought him a long way since then. He said, “It was my grandfather who insisted on helping you, but I’m glad he did.” He waved a hand at the clearing, taking in the mountain-trees, the platforms of the suspended forest, all of the Reaches. “I wouldn’t have missed this trip for anything. My only regret is that Grandfather will be furious that he missed it, and undoubtedly take it out on me.” He nodded to Moon and added, “And I know he would like to see you again, if you ever return to the east.”
“I won’t be going back,” Moon said. He wasn’t happy to see Niran go, either. In the times when life with the court became overwhelmingly strange, it had been good to have a groundling to talk to. But he knew how much Niran missed his family and the Golden Isles. “But thank him for me.”
Everyone said their last goodbyes, or in Stone’s case, cuffed Moon in the head and said, “Don’t do anything crazy while I’m gone.”
Moon and Jade retreated to the knothole to watch the boats leave. The Arbora on the platform untied the ropes and both craft lifted easily into the air. Their sails didn’t expand; the ships were powered by tiny pieces of rock from the heart of a flying island that allowed them to travel on the lines of force that crossed the Three Worlds. The sails were only for extra speed on windy days. The Valendera floated gracefully off the platform, then turned to find the path through the green caverns of the mountain-tree forest. The Indala followed, its hull scraping a spiral tree on the edge of the platform and its turn just a little jerky. Moon hoped Blossom didn’t run into anything on the way out of the Reaches. The path upward through the tree canopies wasn’t that far away, and he thought she would do better once she was up in the open air.
That was Moon’s last tie to his past, to the groundling world, severed. It should have felt like a relief. Moon wasn’t sure what he felt. Which was nothing new, so maybe he shouldn’t worry about it.
Jade took Moon’s wrist. She looked thoughtful. “Do you wish you were going?”
Startled and guilty, Moon felt himself flush. “No,” he said. “Why would you think that?”
She shook her head, and watched the boats slowly vanish into the dim light and mist of the forest. “You’ve always traveled so much. Is it hard to stay in one place?”
“No, it’s not hard. It’s just…different.” Moon didn’t think staying in one place would be the problem.
Three Changes of the Month Later
Moon had, at several points since they arrived at the new colony, asked various people exactly what consorts were supposed to do, besides be mated to a queen to produce royal clutches and infertile warriors for the court. The fact that no one seemed to have a straight answer wasn’t encouraging.
When he asked Chime, they were out watching over the Arbora hunters, who were stalking game on the platforms of the suspended forest. The court was still unsure of all the dangers in this new place, and it was much safer to have a group of warriors keep watch when the hunters were focused on their prey, while the soldiers stayed behind to guard the platforms and entrances of the colony tree. Since Aeriat, especially royal Aeriat, didn’t normally hunt, Moon was technically supposed to be just along for the exercise, even though he had more experience with hunting and being stalked than all the warriors put together.
Moon had been able to help a little with the warriors’ other new duties, like exploring Indigo Cloud’s new territory and helping the hunters make detailed maps of the platforms and the connecting bridges between them. They were also noting predators and all the different types of grasseaters and where they ranged, which were abundant and made good staple prey, and which were scarce and better left alone to increase over long periods.
Answering his question, Chime said, “Consorts are supposed to listen to the Arbora, any concerns they have, or things they aren’t happy about, and try to gently point it out to the queens.”
Perched near them, Balm said, wryly, “It helps if they listen to the warriors, too.”
“Of course,” Chime said, as if that was self-evident. Then ruined it by adding, “But warriors’ concerns are too frivolous to worry about.”
Balm eyed him. “So who cares what warriors think?” Balm was Jade’s clutchmate, one of the female warriors sometimes born to queen’s clutches. Having been a warrior all her life, her perspective was somewhat different than Chime’s.
Moon rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the platform, feeling the conversation had gone off on a tangent that would make it difficult if not impossible to return to the original subject. The afternoon was warm and the air so damp it might as well be raining, the light dim through cloud cover somewhere high above the leafy canopy. From the branch they had a view across to the platform about two hundred paces below, where the Arbora hunted.
It was a huge surface, spiraling halfway around the enormous bulk of a mountain-tree, heavily forested with a stream of runoff falling down onto the smaller platforms nestled in the branches below it. Moon could catch occasional flashes of color from the Arbora’s scales as they climbed and leapt among the thick greenery. Arbora might be smaller than Aeriat and lack wings, but in their shifted forms they were scaled and powerfully muscled, and their teeth and claws were just as sharp. Unfortunately, the suspended forest was just as rife with predators as it was with grasseaters.
Moon wasn’t as worried about the forested hunting ground as he was the platform directly below it. It was overshadowed and overgrown with bulbous white vines with dark purple leaves, concealed by drifts of mist. What little he could see looked dangerous and Moon thought all it needed were piles of bones along its rotting edges.
Balm was saying, “If you don’t listen to the warriors it just causes more problems with the young males—”
Chime snorted in a derisive way that was an invitation for Balm to hit him. “Warriors complain a lot. Much more than Arbora. If you listen to them you wouldn’t have time for—”
“All you people complain more than anybody else I’ve ever met,” Moon said, “with less reason.” He had tried to keep his opinions on running the court to himself, because there was nothing he knew less about than managing a Raksuran colony. And he thought Jade did a good job of keeping an eye on the Arbora and the warriors. He had no intention of butting in and causing trouble by repeating “concerns” unless he knew a lot more about the situation.
Chime stiffened in offense, but Balm laughed. “It’s probably true.”
Moon nudged his shoulder against Chime’s. “It was a joke.”
“It was not.” But Chime settled his ruffled spines anyway. “Oh, speaking of complaining, there was something I wanted to let you know. I heard some of the others talking: they’re worried that Stone won’t come back.”