One of Malachite’s spines flicked. She said, “Fell. He scents Fell.”
Fell. At Stone’s advanced age, his senses were far more acute than any other Raksura’s, even a queen’s. He had detected the past taint of Fell at the old Indigo Cloud colony, and known they were present some distance from the destroyed Sky Copper colony. Moon thought, Fell here? After what happened to this court? So many deaths? The Arbora would go crazy. Unless…The Fell had done to Opal Night what they had tried to do to Indigo Cloud, Feather had admitted as much. And she said Malachite rescued the survivors. Maybe she rescued all of them. Moon looked up at Malachite. “Fell crossbreeds. The Fell forced the captives from the eastern colony to breed with them, but you took the children and brought them back here.”
Stone lifted his brows. “How long ago was this?”
“Forty or so turns,” Moon said. Malachite hadn’t reacted. He looked at Celadon. “They’d be a little younger than you and me.”
Celadon threw one last frustrated glance up at Malachite, then said, “Yes. That’s what happened. We have one consort and several Arbora who are half Fell. There were others, but they died as infants.” She lifted her spines in a resigned shrug. “That’s what they wanted me to explain to you. I was hoping to work up to it a little more gently.”
That explained why there were two consorts’ halls, and why the consorts of Malachite’s bloodline had been moved out of the one Moon was staying in. There was at least one consort that no one had wanted Moon to see. He asked, “Is that why Onyx got so angry when I mentioned the Fell?” Except that didn’t make sense. Onyx’s bloodline had never been in the east, so presumably the crossbreeds were only distantly related to her.
“In a way,” Celadon said. “When Malachite and the others returned from the east, Onyx was reigning queen here. She didn’t want the half-Fell children in the court. So Malachite fought her and became reigning queen. She must have assumed you knew and were taunting her.”
Moon noticed Lithe was looking down at her feet, her face drawn into a wince, as if she anticipated something terrible. Her toes were dirt-smudged, showing she had been out in the gardens again. And Moon realized he hadn’t seen her shifted form.
Moon looked, really looked, at Lithe’s profile, but couldn’t see a hint of anything but Arbora. He said, “Lithe. You’re half-Fell?”
She took a deep breath, and rubbed her face. “Yes. You can see it when I shift. So…I don’t shift unless I have to.” She looked up at Stone, bleak and resigned. “You could tell? Is that why you tasted the simple I made for Moon?”
“I tasted the simple because I don’t trust any of you people,” Stone told her. “I could tell something Fell was or had been in this room, but I hadn’t narrowed it down to you yet.”
“And what are you going to do?” Malachite asked Stone.
“I’m taking him and leaving.” Stone took Moon by the shoulders and set him aside, then pushed to his feet. He was a head shorter than Malachite, but he suddenly seemed to be taking up far more space in the room. “We took a consort of your bloodline without permission; you’re hiding Fell crossbreeds in your court. I’d say we’re even.”
Malachite’s tail twitched. “You may leave whenever you like. He is staying.”
Stone cocked his head, eyes narrowed.
Celadon stood. “But I’ve just met him! All this time, we thought he was dead; you can’t just take him away again, not so soon. Most of the Arbora and warriors haven’t even seen him yet.”
Moon thought that appeal might be more effective on Stone than any threat Malachite could come up with. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked, looking from Celadon to Malachite.
Celadon said, “Because you belong to us.” She glared at Stone. “They had no right to take you.”
Stone was unmoved. “Your bloodline gave up its claim on him turns ago.”
Malachite said, “I never gave up my claim.” For the first time, she met Moon’s eyes. Moon’s breath caught in his throat. It was a reigning queen’s power to touch some inner part of you, to draw it out and connect it to the rest of the court. It was part of how queens could keep other Raksura from shifting. Moon felt like Malachite had just pulled his heart right out of his body.
As if oblivious to what she had just done to him, Malachite said, “And it’s fitting that he be here now.”
Moon wrenched his gaze away and stared at the floor, trying to fight that pull.
It was Stone who said, “Why now?”
Malachite paced away. “When we reached the safety of this colony again, our mentors spent turns trying to understand what had happened to us, why the Fell had tried to make crossbreeds. They searched our histories, went to other courts to search their libraries, always careful never to speak of what had happened to us, but they never found any sign that the Fell had done anything like this before. They scryed for answers, but discovered nothing.” Malachite lifted her head. “But within the past turn, the scrying told us that another Fell flight was coming here, and that that flight would hold the answer.”
“Here?” Moon said, appalled. “To the Reaches?” It can’t be happening again.
Stone hissed in disbelief. “Fell haven’t come here for two hundred turns. They remember what happened the last time.”
“The Reaches were overpopulated then,” Malachite said. “Perhaps they wish to test us again.”
Lithe cleared her throat, and said hesitantly, “I can feel the flight out there, getting closer. It came down from the southwest.”
“You can hear the Fell?” Moon asked Lithe. He wondered what other abilities she had. The crossbreed mentor-dakti from the Fell flight who had attacked Indigo Cloud had had unusual powers of divination, much stronger than a normal mentor.
“No.” She shuddered. “But I know where they are. I’ve always known.” From her expression, it was more burden than asset. “The others—the other crossbreeds—don’t sense them like I do.”
Stone folded his arms. He still looked like he thought he was talking to crazy people, but he was intrigued, too. “So what are you planning to do about this?”
Celadon told him, “There’s a groundling city a day of warrior’s flight away from here. We think the Fell will attack there first.” She turned to Moon. “That’s where I was when you arrived. I’ve been trying to persuade them of the danger.”
Moon stared. “Persuade them of the danger? What does that mean? Did you tell them Fell were coming?”
Celadon hissed. “Of course I did. But they’ve never heard of Fell before. They don’t believe me.”
“They don’t believe you? So you just left, let a whole city full of groundlings with the Fell about to feed on them and no idea—” He took a step forward and a wave of dizziness hit. He swayed, and Stone caught his arm to steady him.
Malachite said, “That’s enough.”
Moon and Stone ended up back in Moon’s bower in the empty consorts’ hall.
It was past sunset and the window into the hall was dark, the bower lit only by the spelled stones set into the carving. The Arbora had brought food and then scattered because Stone was intimidating, especially when he was irritated, and Moon’s mood wasn’t much better. Stone had made Moon eat before he let him talk anymore, and Moon had choked down the plates of raw meat without tasting any of it. Fell crossbreeds raised as Raksura, auguries, it was all too much to make sense of in one night. And the worse part, that the Fell were heading toward a completely unprepared groundling city. That thought brought vivid images of Saraseil to mind, the dakti hunting helpless groundlings through the streets, the kethel tunneling through the walls of stone buildings after the inhabitants who had tried to take shelter there. The fire, the gutted bodies. Fell attacks on cities were worse than on camps or small settlements. The groundlings were so often trapped in their own homes, with their defenses against other predators or groundling tribes useless against the Fell.