Good. Moon started down the steps.
All the lamps belowdecks had burned out, but bits of cloth that had been spelled to make light were stuffed into the sconces. In a cabin on the other side of the passage, Saffron placed Dare carefully down next to the crumpled body of another young warrior.
The air was heavy with blood and sickness, detectable even over the stench of Fell. As Moon stepped into the main cabin, he found the wounded laid out on blankets on the floor at the far end of the room. He moved toward them, looking for Root and Song, sick at the thought of what he might see.
The warriors were all in their groundling forms, all deeply unconscious, their clothes bloody from the cuts that had rent their scales and transferred to their skin when they shifted. Root had a bad slash stretching from his collarbone down his left side. His eyes were deeply sunken in their sockets, his features sharpened as if the flesh had thinned and tightened. Except for the slow, almost imperceptible movement of his chest, he looked dead. Song was worse, slashed across the neck. Blood matted her curling hair, trickled down from the corner of her mouth.
Ivory was still awake, Shade supporting her head, Lithe kneeling next to her. Moon took one look at Shade’s face and gave up his last suspicion. Shade’s expression was set with shock, his eyes all pupil, his light skin so pale it was almost translucent. He looked like Flower had before she died.
Lithe’s eyes were wide, frightened, as if the effort of holding back panic was almost too much. She said, “Moon.” Her voice was thick with relief. “We thought—We were afraid—Is Celadon—?”
“We don’t know about the others yet,” Floret told her.
Moon knelt next to Ivory. “They’re all in a healing sleep?”
“Yes.” Lithe touched Ivory’s forehead. Moon could see the effort it cost her to pretend to be calm. “I need to send her into one, but she won’t let me.”
Ivory’s scent was bitter and coppery with blood, and her collarbone was broken. She was in her Arbora form, so there was no telling what damage had been done to her wings. Her scales were scratched and torn, the fingers of her right hand smashed, her claws broken.
She opened her eyes and focused on Moon. Her voice grating with pain, she said, “Where’s Celadon?”
As she spoke, he saw she still had blood on her fangs. “Either dead or free, flying to Malachite and the others.”
With her good hand she reached over and squeezed his wrist, hard enough for his bones to grind together. “I hope everything they said about you was true.”
Me, too, Moon thought. What he wanted to do was huddle in a corner and quietly panic, or loudly panic, but he couldn’t afford to.
She raised her voice enough to say, “Saffron. Until I wake, obey this consort as if his words are mine.”
Saffron gave Moon a wary glance, but said, “I will, Ivory.”
Ivory sank back against Shade and closed her eyes. Shade made a frightened sound, like a fledgling.
Biting her lip in concentration, Lithe put a hand on Ivory’s brow. Ivory’s body gradually relaxed, her breathing grew even and slow, the lines of pain on her face smoothed away. Lithe sighed at the effort and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know if she’ll live. She has a chance, if—” She cut the words off.
If the Fell leave her alone, Moon thought. They might all be dead in the next few moments.
As Lithe and Shade laid Ivory down on the blanket, Moon got to his feet. He looked around and realized the others were staring at him. Right, he was in charge. To get his thoughts in order more than anything else, he said, “The Fell knew we were coming here, knew about the trap.”
Lithe sat back and pushed the sweaty hair off her face. “But how? The crossbreeds, I know what you think, but we didn’t—”
“That’s not what I think,” Moon interrupted.
Chime said, “You think this is the same thing that happened at Indigo Cloud.” He folded his arms tightly and his voice trembled a little, but he didn’t look as bad as Shade. “That these Fell have crossbreeds of their own, a mentor-dakti who guided them here.”
“It would explain a lot.” Experimentally, Moon shifted to his winged form, then back to groundling. “But we can still shift.”
“Or maybe they just haven’t bothered with us yet,” Chime said, and glanced nervously up at the deck.
Saffron, Lithe, and Shade all followed his gaze.
Floret paced to the doorway and stood so she could watch the stairs. “It is like what happened to us. The way they knew we were going to the groundling city, what we were going to do. But why attack Opal Night, one of the strongest courts in the Reaches?”
“Maybe revenge against Malachite, for destroying a Fell flight,” Chime told her. “Like they wanted revenge against Moon, for killing a ruler.”
Saffron turned her head to stare at Moon, incredulous. Moon guessed Ivory hadn’t repeated anything he had said to her in the bow yesterday. That made him feel even worse about what had happened to her.
“It also doesn’t explain why we’re going northwest,” Shade said tentatively. He still looked shaky, but maybe trying to solve the puzzle of what had happened and why was helping him stay calm. “If they want to attack Opal Night, why are they heading away from it?”
“That’s a good question.” Moon wished they had an answer to it. “Are there any courts in this direction? Or another groundling city?”
“No courts that we know of.” Saffron frowned in thought. “I never heard of any groundling cities, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“They’ve just had a groundling city, though,” Chime said. “Why didn’t they stay longer at Aventera?”
“They didn’t seem interested in it,” Moon admitted reluctantly. “It was like they came for us, caught us, and forgot about the groundlings.”
They all digested that unpleasant thought for a moment. Lithe said slowly, “I think… This doesn’t change anything. I think we were right, all along, that the Fell came here for crossbreeds. But they just needed one or two of us. Now that they have Shade and me, they don’t need to attack Opal Night anymore.”
Chime hunched his shoulders uneasily. “She may be right.”
Shade looked even more sick. “But why do they want us?”
Moon didn’t think they were going to like the answer to that question, whatever it was. It might mean these Fell wanted more Raksura for breeding, but in that case it seemed strange that they had settled for only two crossbreeds and one full Raksuran consort. He didn’t want to think about it, and he didn’t want the others to think about it. They had to focus on getting out of here. “Chime, do you know if Delin has anything on this boat we can use? Like weapons?”
Before Chime could answer, Saffron snorted. “We have weapons. Our claws.”
Moon wasn’t in the mood for any backtalk from warriors, but before he could explain that and include a demonstration, Lithe said sharply, “Saffron, don’t be stupid. He means groundling weapons. Like something that shoots projectiles, or makes things catch on fire.”
From the doorway, Floret gave Saffron’s back a withering look.
Shade stood up straight, enthusiasm making his voice stronger. “If we could set the sac on fire and get the boat out…” He saw the flaw in the plan. “But the boat is too slow. The kethel would just catch us again and kill us.”
Lithe hesitated, as if reluctant to voice her thought, but she said, “It might be better if we forced them to kill us. Before they have a chance to do whatever it is that they captured us to do.”
Moon couldn’t argue with that. Floret nodded grimly, Chime looked sick, and Saffron frustrated. Moon thought Saffron wanted to argue, or hated the idea of using groundling weapons, but she knew that Lithe was right.