“No, I just got back. Weren’t you there?” Vine had fallen a little out of favor with Pearl, but not with Jade, and Moon was surprised he had been left out.
“Nobody was. No warriors, I mean.” Vine glanced out into the well. “Not even River, and he’s not exactly thrilled about it.”
All right, that was odd. River had been Pearl’s favorite so long he thought he was a consort.
“See if you can get them to tell us what happened,” Vine urged as Moon moved away.
Moon ducked through an empty bower, out to an interior passage, then up the smaller stairwell that led past the queens’ level and to the consorts’ quarters. As he passed through the unused rooms, he couldn’t hear any disturbance from below. That might be a good sign. If Tempest had delivered some sort of insult or threat from Emerald Twilight, he thought Pearl would probably still be ranting about it.
The stairs opened into one of the smaller halls, the walls carved with scenes of Arbora building bridges between platforms in the suspended forest, the mountain-trees towering over them. Stone had told him that this hall was meant to be a private retiring room for consorts, where they could compose themselves before joining any gathering in the larger hall beyond. Moon had thought that sounded pointless, before he had found himself using the room for exactly that purpose when they had entertained visitors from other courts.
The round doorway led to a short turning passage only a few paces long, there to block any direct view from the queens’ main hall into the retiring room. It was also great for eavesdropping, to make sure you wanted to join any meeting in the hall before you committed yourself by walking into it, but Moon didn’t bother with that now.
Pearl, Jade, and Heart were still here, sitting around on cushions near the large metal bowl hearth. The hearth was filled with heating stones, and the best water kettle and the best tea set the court owned were out, along with a scatter of seating cushions for the absent visitors. So it looked like they had actually intended hospitality, whatever had happened.
And something had happened. Jade faced away from Moon so he couldn’t see her expression, but her spines were flared. Heart, in groundling form, seemed dispirited, and Pearl looked grim, her spines twitching in agitation.
As Moon stepped out of the doorway and shifted to his groundling form, Heart was saying, “I just don’t think we should—you should—worry before we know for certain. We don’t even know—”
Pearl spotted Moon and cut Heart off with a hiss. Startled, Heart lifted her head, saw Moon, and immediately looked guilty.
So I’m not supposed to know what happened, either, Moon thought, crossing the hall toward them. That was a little odd, though at least it meant that Emerald Twilight probably hadn’t declared war on them. He took a seat on the cushion next to Jade. She didn’t look up. Pearl stared at the hearth. Heart cleared her throat, and said, “How did the hunt go?”
“It was good.” Moon wondered how long they could keep this up. They had to know the others would have told him that Tempest had been here. “No trouble this time.”
An uneasy silence followed. It was so uneasy, Pearl stirred and asked, “Did you find the hopper herd Bone keeps talking about?”
Moon admitted, “No, but we found some big lopers.”
“Ah.” Pearl flicked her spines again, looked at Jade and looked away. “Just as well.”
Moon glanced at Jade, then took a good look. She was absolutely rigid with fury.
“Was it about Halcyon?” he blurted, before he realized that might not be the best thing to say at the moment. Halcyon was another sister queen of Emerald Twilight, Tempest’s clutchmate. She had attacked them on the way back from the forest coast, as part of a plot to get more power within Emerald Twilight, and Jade had had to fight her. Nothing that had happened afterward had been Indigo Cloud’s fault, but Moon had always wondered if Emerald Twilight really believed that.
Jade twitched at the name, then made an effort to unclench her claws. “No. No, it wasn’t about her.” Her voice was husky, strained. As if she had been snarling at someone, or trying not to.
“What was it about?” Really worried now, Moon put a hand on her wrist. Pearl watched them with a completely opaque expression. Heart hunched her shoulders slightly, as if braced for Jade’s response.
Jade let out her breath and forced her spines to relax. She managed an apologetic smile and reached over to squeeze Moon’s wrist. “It was about territory, they were just trying to push us, make us react. It was stupid; I let Tempest make me angry, we almost…” She added, “It was nothing.”
Moon hesitated. If he had had the slightest inclination to believe this, Pearl’s ironic expression and Heart’s furtive twitch would have squashed it. His first impulse was to think it was something about him, but he knew he was overly suspicious. Actually, overly suspicious was putting it mildly. And he couldn’t think what it would be, unless Tempest had tossed off some casual insult that had caught Jade at the wrong moment. Though that didn’t seem to fit Pearl’s reaction. Whatever it was, he had the feeling it wouldn’t help to press the point, at least not now.
And he could always get Chime to try to ease the truth out of Heart, later.
Moon said, “All right.” He added, “You should get something to eat.”
“I should,” Jade agreed. She tightened her grip on Moon’s wrist and stood, hauling him to his feet. She met Pearl’s gaze with a look of pure steel-eyed hate. “We’ll talk later.”
Pearl rippled her spines in a shrug, resigned and amused. “For all the good it will do.”
Over the next few days, Jade and Pearl continued to say nothing about what had happened during the meeting with Tempest. Chime reported that Heart refused absolutely to tell him or anyone else what had been said. When Chime had asked her the first few times, she had said only that the queens didn’t want her to discuss it. When he had kept asking she had growled at him that it was none of his damn business and if he asked her again she was going to rip his frills out. “You could ask Balm,” Moon had pointed out.
“You can ask Balm,” Chime had retorted. “She can’t kill you.”
Yes, Moon supposed asking Balm to violate Jade’s confidence wouldn’t go over well. If Jade had even told Balm what had happened. Moon gave up on ever knowing. Maybe it had been nothing, just an exchange of insults that both queens would eventually get over. And it was only a day later that something happened that put the whole incident right out of his mind.
One of the good things Moon had discovered was that teaching fledglings was acceptable work for consorts, and he thought he was fairly good at it. Though he would feel a lot better about his efforts if he could just get Bitter to fly.
Moon nudged Bitter with an elbow, nodding toward two young warriors as they dove past, their wings slanted back for maximum speed. “That doesn’t look like fun?” By this point, he already knew the answer; he just wanted Bitter to know he hadn’t given up asking.
Chewing on a piece of hard yellow fruit, Bitter just shook his head.
It had turned into another warm day, bright sunlight falling through the heavy canopy of leaves high above. Moon and Bitter sat out on one of the mountain-tree’s smaller branches, an expanse of rough gray wood twenty or so paces across. They had a good if oblique view of the giant knothole, the waterfall, and the multiple levels of garden platforms.
Bitter’s clutchmates, Frost and Thorn, fledgling queen and fledgling consort, flew in the waterfall’s spray, dipping and wheeling in the cool air currents off the rush of falling water. A few warriors were also in the air, most further out over the clearing formed by the tree’s giant canopy, some on watch, others just stretching their wings.