Edge of Worlds (The Books of the Raksura) (35 page)

Balm opened her eyes, glared sleepily, and brushed the scale off her nose.

When the light started to shade into evening, Magrim began to make worried comments about trying to sail back in the dark. “We can wait longer,” Moon told Jade. They were curled up in a corner together, Chime sitting nearby, and River napping beneath the bench on the opposite side of the deck. Balm was taking a turn at watch, sitting on the railing. “If we have to go back after dark, we can tell him which direction to sail in.” Raksura, with an inborn knowledge of where south was, didn’t need compasses.

“Yes, but there are rocky patches and reefs through here,” Jade said. “We could see them as we were flying over. It might be more than tricky if—”

Then Balm said, “I see Stone.”

Stone slung himself up onto the rail, and held down a hand for Rorra. He said, “Help her, she’s not in good shape.”

“Is she hurt?” Jade said, moving Moon aside. She leaned over the rail, caught Rorra around the waist, and heaved her up and onto the boat. Rorra slid down to a sitting position on the deck. Her face was drawn and gray with exhaustion and her body was wracked with hard shivers.

“Just tired and cold.” Stone swung himself onto the deck.

Moon knew being carried by Stone at high speed in a strong wind was not a pleasant experience. He said, “Kalam, is there something to dry her off with?”

Kalam opened one of the supply boxes and dug out a drying cloth that might be used to clean the deck, but it was good enough for an emergency. Moon took it and crouched in front of Rorra, holding it up. She nodded, her teeth still chattering, and Moon started to dry her arms and legs.

Above his head, Stone said, “We have a problem.”

“An additional problem?” Jade said. “Because if it’s two different flights of Fell—”

“Rorra saw a half-Raksuran Fell. A queen.”

Everyone went silent. Moon froze for an instant, then Rorra shivered again under his hands and he went back to drying her legs. “Get her clothes,” he said.

Kalam moved first, bringing Rorra’s shirt, jacket, and pants.

Jade said, finally, “You’re sure? You saw it too?”

Stone said, “No, just Rorra. But she described it, and it can’t be anything else.”

Jade hissed out a curse. Balm said, “Did she see any others? If there’s mentor-dakti—”

“That was the only one she saw,” Stone said. Moon thought,
one’s enough
. Especially if it was a female Fell ruler with the abilities of a Raksuran queen. Stone continued, “Like we thought, the Fell were on a floating platform thing, like the hive the gleaners built. Most of them were inside and she didn’t get a chance to count them, or see if there were any others that didn’t look like Fell.”

Moon guided Rorra’s arms into her shirt, then put the rest of her clothes over her legs like a blanket. Rorra said in a choked voice, “Apparently sealings don’t fly well.”

“I don’t know, it sounds like you did great,” Moon told her. “Chime, River, come here and sit on either side of her.” Raksuran bodies were the best heat source on the boat right now.

Chime moved over to sit by the rail, squeezing in next to Rorra. River, startled by Stone’s revelation, didn’t argue, just shifted to his groundling form and moved to crouch down on her other side.

Kalam and Magrim had been hovering nearby, watching Rorra worriedly. Kalam said, “We should start back now. We need to get around the islands before dark.”

Jade told him, “Yes, as fast as the boat can go.”

Balm asked, “Should I scout ahead?”

Stone still sat on the rail, scanning the horizon. “I didn’t see anything up there. And if they followed us, we don’t want anybody in the air to give away our location.”

Jade told Balm, “Wait till we get past the islands.”

Magrim turned to go to the steering lever and get the boat moving. Chime, chafing Rorra’s wrist, said, “I wish we had some tea to give her.”

“I’m all right.” Rorra’s voice was still a harsh croak, but she was only shivering a little now, and her color was better. “I need to tell you what I saw. Stone says it’s important.”

Jade stepped over and sat down on the deck next to Moon. “Tell us.”

The boat swayed as Magrim turned it. Rorra took a deep breath. “Stone put me down in the water some distance from where we believed the Fell were. I swam for perhaps two hours before I found them. As we thought, they had forced the gleaners to build a platform for them. It was large, nearly as big as our ship, with the dome shelters atop it. There was a great deal of floating debris around it, some plant matter and also pieces of what I thought must be gleaners’ corpses, and bits of the platform itself, as if parts of it had collapsed at some point.” She pulled her shirt more tightly around her. “They didn’t see me. I can see through water to the surface, better than most beings. My eyes are designed for it. I floated just slightly under the surface with the flotsam and watched them. Dakti were perched on top, perhaps keeping watch, about thirty or so of them. I saw one kethel, sleeping on an open section of the platform. Perhaps smaller than those that attacked last night.”

She coughed and Kalam handed her a water flask. After a drink, she continued, “I watched for some time. I was hoping to see more kethel, or something to tell me how many there were. Then finally three Fell came out onto the platform where the kethel slept. I described them to Stone later and he said two were rulers in groundling form.” She looked at Moon. “They looked like you, but their skin was very pale, with no color to it at all. And their hair was . . .” She made a helpless gesture. “Different. I might have mistaken them for Raksura, if I hadn’t seen Raksura before.”

Moon nodded grimly. Chime muttered, “We get that a lot.”

Rorra continued, “I didn’t have a good angle of view, but they seemed smaller, about Root’s size. The third being was larger, female, with scales that were dark like yours, and wings, but the textures were different. Her head had a heavy crest like the rulers, but she also had those things.” She pointed to Jade’s back. “She spoke to the rulers, though of course I could hear nothing. Several dakti came out to listen too. She . . . patted one on the head.”

River made a noise of disgust.

“Then the kethel woke, and slid into the water suddenly. I was afraid . . .” She hesitated. “Terrified, actually, that they had sensed me somehow and sent it after me. I stopped resisting the current and let it carry me away from the platform, until I thought I was far enough away. Then I swam back to where Stone was waiting for me.”

There was silence for a moment. Moon bit his lip, and said finally, “It could have been a half-Fell, half-Raksuran warrior.”

“Would the rulers have listened to a warrior?” Jade sat back and shook her head. “And why keep a crossbreed warrior? It would just be an inferior kind of ruler, to them.”

Stone said, “That’s what I thought. It’s got to be a ruler-queen.” Moon met his gaze and Stone looked away toward the sky again.
What might be in the city was bad enough
, Moon thought.
This is worse
.

Kalam had been quiet, listening carefully all through Rorra’s description. He said now, “You’re saying that Raksura and Fell can interbreed. Is that because you are both descended from forerunners?”

“Probably,” Moon said.

“Does Delin know about this?” Kalam asked.

“Uh . . .” Moon looked at Jade. If someone had to make the decision whether or not to reveal to the Kishan that a crossbreed Raksura might be able to open a sealed forerunner city, it wasn’t going to be him.

Jade looked tired. She said, “Yes. But I want to wait to talk about this until we return to the others.”

In Raksuran, River said, “If it’s a queen, we’re in trouble.”

It was a vast understatement. The last half-Fell half-Raksuran queen they had encountered had a queen’s ability to keep Raksura from shifting. It had taken both Jade and Pearl to kill her. Her voice dry, Jade replied in Raksuran, “Really? You think so?”

River snarled, “Somebody had to say the obvious and Root isn’t here.”

Balm snorted a laugh, and tried to turn it into a cough. Kalam said, uncertainly, “What are you saying?”

“We’re talking about how much trouble we’re in,” Moon said.

Chime’s expression was drawn in thought. “So are these two different flights then? And not one flight nesting in two places? And if they are, which one attacked us last night?”

“Good questions,” Jade said. She pushed to her feet and faced the bow, every line of her body radiating impatience. “We need to get back.”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

T
he wind had changed slightly so it took longer to get back than Moon had hoped. It was full dark by the time they spotted the lights of the sunsailer. The stench of dead kethel, coming from the corpse left on the beach after last night’s battle, tainted the air.

There hadn’t been much to do on the way back, except take turns scouting and listen to Chime, Jade, Balm, and even River speculate about the Fell’s plans and purpose. It wasn’t as bad as listening to the Arbora do it, but Moon found it annoying enough. Stone must have too, because he retired to the back of the boat to talk with Magrim.

Rorra felt well enough to stand up and finish dressing, and to get her boots back on. Then she fell asleep. Moon mostly answered Kalam’s worried questions and tried not to overthink everything. The fact that this flight had at least one Raksuran crossbreed with them was just more confirmation that their and Delin’s speculation had been right all along. The Fell must be certain it was a forerunner city, even if the Kishan weren’t.

Though the Fell who had managed to open the underwater forerunner city had specifically needed a half-Fell half-Raksuran consort, as close to what a forerunner looked like as they could come. The question that Moon most wanted the answer to was whether the reason the Fell hadn’t managed to get into this city yet was because they couldn’t find the doorway, or because the crossbreed queen wasn’t close enough to a forerunner to make it open.

“I wonder what court she’s related to,” Jade had said, frowning into the distance as the sky and sea darkened around them.

“Some eastern colony that was overwhelmed and destroyed.” Balm’s shoulders twitched in an involuntary shudder.

That thought was too close to home for Moon. But unlike Opal Night’s eastern court, there hadn’t been a Malachite to search for survivors and retrieve their half-Fell children. Moon didn’t want to think what life would have been like for Shade and Lithe and the others if they hadn’t been found and brought to the Reaches.

“You think there’s a progenitor, still? Back in that hive somewhere?” Chime asked uneasily.

“A progenitor voluntarily sharing power over the rulers with a part-Raksuran queen?” Stone snorted. “I doubt it.”

It was a relief when they came within range of the sunsailer, and one of its distance-lights crossed the bow. Rorra waved, and the Kishan on guard on the deck waved back. “Doesn’t look like there’s been another attack,” Balm said. She was in groundling form, and the cool wind lifted the curling strands of her hair. “They must be waiting until tonight.”

Chime said, “Merit said he was going to try scrying again, but I guess Bramble wouldn’t have much to do, unless the Kishan let her help with something.”

Stone made a “humpf” noise.

“What?” Jade asked him. “She didn’t have much to do on the flying boat, either.”

Stone said, “There’s a lot more trouble to get into here than there was on the flying boat.”

Magrim maneuvered their craft alongside the sunsailer’s hull, and Moon and the others caught the lines tossed down by the crew and tied them off at Rorra’s direction. Two ladders dropped down and everyone started to scramble up the side. Callumkal waited on deck, saying, “Were you successful? We’ve made a great discovery here.”

“A discovery?” Kalam asked, eyes alight with excitement. “The city?”

Moon swung over the railing, realizing Callumkal looked, and sounded, more excited than Moon had ever seen him. He hadn’t seemed this agitated when the Fell had attacked. Beside him, Chime muttered, “Uh oh.”

Callumkal said, “Delin discovered the location of the doorway!”

“Oh,” Jade managed, after what Moon was sure was a moment of stunned dismay, because that was what he was feeling. She added, “How?”

“Delin was able to interpret some clues, but it was Bramble who really made the breakthrough.” Callumkal was obviously proud to deliver this good news. “We couldn’t have done it without her.”

Balm, River, and Chime all looked at Jade, wide-eyed. Jade somehow kept her spines from lifting, and said, “I’m sure you couldn’t.”

Of course not
, Moon thought. Stone said, “I told you so.”

“We didn’t mean to find it.” Bramble sat on the floor in the cabin they had been given. “Things . . . just got out of hand.”

Delin had been absently combing his beard. “It is not their fault. I had no idea we were so close. I meant to delay—”

Both Arbora looked tired, and Bramble in particular smelled strongly of saltwater and sea wrack. “He said to stop digging, but I had water in my ears, and I didn’t hear—”

Merit, who had withdrawn across the room and was pointedly sitting near Jade, said, “I told her not to do it.”

Moon buried his face in his hands. Briar, Root, and Song perched on the bench, all being very quiet. Balm and River had been told to go out on the top deck to watch for Fell and had seemed glad to do it.

Moon didn’t even think Jade was angry at the warriors. Warriors just weren’t used to telling Arbora what to do. Especially younger warriors like Briar, Root, and Song, when faced with a mature Arbora like Bramble. Moon would have been happy to tell her what to do, along with Stone, and also Balm, who was used to relaying Jade’s orders and anticipating what those orders were going to be. River probably wouldn’t have been bad at it either, and Chime, having been an Arbora himself, would have been even more effective. But none of them had been here.

Bramble, glaring at Merit, said, “That’s not helpful.”

Jade flicked her spines in a way that signaled everyone really needed to shut up now. She said, “Delin, tell us what happened.”