Then Ivades said, “Is it perhaps Opal Night?”
Moon went still. Celadon snarled, “How did you know that?”
Ivades’ tail lashed in amusement.
Putting contempt into his voice, Moon told Celadon, “It’s nothing. The groundlings told him about us.”
That had the desired effect. Ivades answered, “We know much about the machinations of the Raksura.” It looked from Celadon to Moon with that unnerving intensity, then its gaze settled on Moon. It was probably trying to affect Moon’s thoughts somehow, the way it could affect a groundling’s, but Moon didn’t feel anything. “We know Opal Night has more in common with us than it will admit.”
Moon had heard this before, and Ivades was nowhere near as frightening as Ranea. “I know—Aeriat Raksura and Fell were once the same species. Is that what you told the groundlings?”
Ivades was clearly enjoying this, though wasn’t distracted enough to loosen his grip on the boy’s throat. “But our relationship with Opal Night is closer than that.”
“It can’t be,” Celadon said.
“But you have Fell children. You are part of us.”
Oh, no, Moon thought, his heart sinking. This was worse than just Fell coming to the Reaches. The dead flight couldn’t have shared that memory. The progenitors and rulers had died without knowing that Malachite would keep their crossbreed children. Celadon demanded, “Who told you that? How did you know?”
Ivades seemed to realize he had said too much. Or perhaps he had said exactly as much as he had meant to. He whipped away, leapt to the top of the railing in a blur of motion, dragging the boy with him.
The groundlings shouted in dismay. Moon and Celadon lunged forward, but Ivades jumped and flung the boy off the balcony. Both vanished.
Then two large dark-clawed hands shot up over the railing. One crushed the Fell ruler, the other carefully held the groundling. Moon hissed in relief as he skidded to a halt. Stone must have been under the balcony the whole time, holding on by his foot-claws.
Moon neatly caught the groundling as Stone released him. The boy was limp but still breathing. Then he backed away as Stone used his now free hand to pull himself up by the balcony railing. Stone leaned forward and slammed the ruler into the paving, once, twice. The third time, the ruler shifted to groundling.
Stone let go and Celadon pounced to pin the battered body to the ground. Stone shifted to his groundling form and hauled himself over the railing to stand on the balcony. Moon said, “So that’s where you were.”
Stone dusted his hands. “I expected the damn thing to come out further down.”
The other Aventerans staggered to their feet, peered out from behind the columns. Moon shifted to groundling so hopefully no one would shoot projectiles at him, and handed off the unconscious boy to the first Aventeran brave enough to come forward.
He went to where Celadon had Ivades pinned to the floor, and crouched about a pace away. In groundling form, Ivades’ skin was white and smooth, his long dark hair a tangled bloody mess. Moon saw his eyelids twitch. “He’s still alive.”
Celadon shook the limp body. “Why do you want the crossbreeds?”
Ivades snarled, but it was weak and breathy. “To eat.”
Ennia and Havram came forward, staring down at the creature. Ennia’s gray skin was pale, and Havram’s face was a mix of fury and chagrin.
Celadon put more pressure on Ivades’ neck. “You can eat anywhere in the Three Worlds. How did you know to come here? How did you find out about Opal Night?”
Ivades made a noise of bitter amusement, choked out dark-colored blood, and died.
Celadon’s warriors had been perched below the balcony with Stone, waiting for a chance at the Fell. There was some hysteria from the Aventerans when they climbed onto the balcony, but a few sharp words from Ennia calmed them down.
As Celadon explained the necessity of removing the ruler’s head and burying it somewhere, Moon went inside to look for the injured groundling boy. He found him in a large sitting room with a colorful mosaic floor, lying on a couch with several groundlings gathered around. A man pressed a cloth to the bleeding scratches on the boy’s neck, and a woman crouched anxiously beside him.
“Is he all right?” Moon asked. The boy blinked up at him, then his eyes widened in recognition. He had been staring at Moon’s face through the entire tense conversation with the ruler, and must have seen enough to recognize him in his other form.
The man who was tending the boy, presumably a healer, eyed him sharply and said, “It depends. Are your claws poisonous?”
Moon set his jaw and managed not to hiss. It was good to know the groundling world hadn’t changed any. “No, and if they were, it wouldn’t matter, because I’m not the one who clawed him.”
The woman said fiercely, “They offered themselves in my son’s place. None of the rest of you did.”
Moon decided Aventeran gratitude was even more uncomfortable than ingratitude, and retreated to the balcony.
Out there, Ivades’ corpse still lay on the paving, but someone had tossed a blanket over it. From the outline, the head was still there. Havram faced Celadon and Stone, while Ennia stood by. Some of the other groundlings gathered at a wary distance, but one stood next to Havram, a young man dressed in the same rich style. This didn’t look good.
His voice tight as wire, Havram said, “Livan is an archimaster. He has never heard of this barbaric practice.”
“Livan has never heard of the Fell.” Celadon’s whole body was tense, her spines trembled with the effort to stay flat, and she looked almost more angry than when facing down the ruler. “So his opinion on the best way to dispose of their remains is irrelevant at best.”
“What?” Moon asked Stone.
In Raksuran, Stone replied wearily, “That’s their magic-maker, here to tell everybody how this is all our fault.”
“What?” Moon repeated.
“Perhaps you should go for now,” Ennia told Celadon. “Later, after we speak of this—”
“Just go,” Havram interrupted. “And stop trying to involve us in your disagreements.”
Stone made an exasperated noise. He looked from Celadon to Moon and said, “Have you two seen enough? Are you happy now? Can we leave?”
Moon was more than ready to get out of this place. He was almost as tired of Ennia’s attempts to pretend all was well when she clearly knew better as he was of Havram’s obstinacy.
Celadon growled in her throat. “Yes, we can go.” She stepped over to Ivades, tossed the blanket aside, planted her foot on the corpse and ripped its head off with one twist. She straightened up and said to Ennia and Havram, “The Fell will come. I hope at least some of your people survive.”
They took flight from the balcony, leaping off it to fight the wind.
Celadon guided them over the plateau, out of sight of the city and its patrolling bladder-boats, to one of the flying islands. It was a small one, only a few hundred paces long and wide, and almost buried in wind-blown greenery. There was an old ruin on it, but it was just a few roofless stone walls covered in vines. One side was open to a sheer cliff where the rest of the structure had fallen away when the island had broken apart. Moon wondered if the people of Aventera knew about the stone at the heart of the islands that contained the magic to keep them aloft. He doubted it, since they used the awkward bladder-boats for air travel.
They landed, and the warriors busied themselves finding dry wood for the crude firepit already constructed against the outer wall of the ruin. Apparently this was where Celadon had stayed on her previous visits to the city. One of the warriors told Moon, “There’s a better ruin on one of the other islands, but it has flying snakes.”