Edge of Worlds (The Books of the Raksura) (16 page)

With the warriors, Moon followed Jade and Callumkal and Vendoin down a corridor and into the steering cabin in the bow. The long windows all around had top and bottom shutters angled to give some protection from the outside, and had reflective interior surfaces to allow a better view. The actual steering device was a long lever projecting out of the back wall, like the tiller of a small boat. A Janderi woman held it in position while Kalam consulted a small glass and metal directional device. There were benches around the walls, and a flat board that extended out from the wall for examining maps.

The only thing Moon couldn’t figure out were the pottery jars with clear crystal windows on a shelf along the back wall. They might have been decorative, but somehow he didn’t think so.

Callumkal spread the map out on the extendable board for Jade and Vendoin. Tactfully, no one mentioned the disagreement over it at their first meeting. Callumkal said, “Delin told us that the regions the forerunners must have occupied have not been mapped.”

Jade shrugged her spines. “Delin knows more of the forerunners than we do. There are no Raksuran stories about them.”

“That seems very odd,” Vendoin said. “There are a great many stories throughout the Kishlands of the different species who lived there before us. Not so many of the foundation builders, granted, for they seem to have come before all the others.”

After the discovery of the underwater city, the mentors at Opal Night had gone through their libraries looking for old forgotten legends. There had been nothing. The fact that the Raksura and the Fell had once been one species was referenced in many of the older stories, but there was nothing about what that species might have been like.

Chime and Delin had wondered if Opal Night was actually the first court, if the forerunners had come to the Opal Night mountain-tree when it was young, and had decided to camp there. If they had built the city that the roots of the tree had destroyed uncounted turns ago. If the fringe of the Reaches was where they had met the Arbora. There were no answers, though there were lots of questions.

And Moon might just be overly suspicious again, but he got the distinct feeling that Callumkal and Vendoin thought the Raksura were holding out on them. He noticed Kalam was staring at him, which didn’t help any. Kalam seemed to notice he was staring, and looked hurriedly away. That didn’t help either.

There wasn’t much room left around the map, so Moon sat down to wait, knowing Jade would go over it all later for the others. Kalam hesitated, then moved around the cabin to sit next to Moon.

“What are those jars for?” Moon asked, since sitting in awkward silence was worse than awkward talking.

“Oh.” Kalam looked around as if he had forgotten their existence. “They hold samples of the different growth materials of the ship, the ones that suspend it off the ground, the ones that protect it. In the jars, you can see if the samples need to be sprayed with water, or other fluids we can prepare. If they do, there’s a good chance the materials of the ship need tending too.”

It sounded like a wise precaution. “So this ship was grown in Kish?”

“Yes, by the Kish-Latre. That’s what we call them. You can’t say their name in Altanic or Kedaic or any of the other trade languages. They live under mounds of earth in the jungles, and they grow all sorts of plants and molds that can be used for a lot of different things.” Kalam hesitated. “Will you tell me something about Raksura?”

Moon saw they were almost done with the map, so an escape would be available soon. Vendoin was explaining something to Jade about wind patterns affecting trade and habitation in the sel-Selatra islands and there was only so long Jade was going to listen to that. “Maybe.”

Kalam ducked his head, a gesture that Moon wanted to read as shy, though he wasn’t sure if it meant the same thing for Kalam’s species. “Is it true you weren’t always a consort? Scholar Delin mentions it in his book.”

“I was always a consort, I just didn’t know it, because I had never seen a Raksura before.” Moon read Kalam’s confused expression and explained, “I was an orphan. It’s a long story.”

Callumkal gently interrupted the wind-pattern lecture with, “I know you will want to see the growth chambers for the materials that keep the ship in flight.”

As the others moved to the door, Moon stood to follow, and said, “You should ask Delin, he knows all about it.” He noticed Balm looking at him with an expression he would have described as wry amusement.
Whatever that was
, Moon thought, and followed Jade out.

At sunset, when they had retired to their cabin with Delin, Moon explained to the others about Rorra’s scent and what it meant. The breeze had died away and the room was warm and softly lit by the light globes mounted on the walls. Root hung from the ceiling by his foot claws, but the other warriors were getting ready to bed down on the floor.

Jade heard the story with a mix of relief and embarrassment, and said, “That explains a lot. I thought I was losing my mind, getting so angry because a sealing looked at me the wrong way.” She turned to Stone, where he was stretched out on one of the shelf beds. “Didn’t you scent it?”

Stone sat up on one elbow. “I scented something, but I filtered it out. It wasn’t Fell, that’s all I cared about.”

Delin, seated on one of the stools with Bramble and Merit at his feet, admitted that he must have been affected too. “It’s a very disturbing thought, that I have misjudged her because of it.”

Moon asked him, “Do you know anything about her? Why is a sealing living inland?”

Delin said, “Kalam told me that she comes from an isolated deepwater sealing kingdom off the western coast of Vesselae, near the sea-trade route called the al-Denar. She lost her right set of fins, in the spot a foot would be on a groundling, to a predator, and she left the sea because of it. The sealing healer changed her body, so she may breathe air at all times, and she came inland and found work with Callumkal.”

That explained the clunky boots. They must be built up on the inside to compensate both for the missing fins and the ones that were left.

“They could change the way she breathes but not just fix her fin?” Briar said, helping Song pull blankets out of the packs. “That’s not very good healing.”

Merit frowned, and said, mostly to himself, “That’s terrible healing.”

Delin said, “She has never spoken much of it but it was apparent that she faced great hardship at first.”

Moon agreed. It sounded like an Aeriat having their wings removed. He wondered if it had been voluntary after all.

Disturbed, Bramble said, “Can we go talk to her about it?”

“No, because it’s private. Don’t bring it up unless she does first.” Moon might not be an expert on groundling behavior, but some things were obvious even to him.

Bramble still looked doubtful. In their defense, the Arbora’s concept of privacy was vague at best. It was probably difficult for them to imagine not living in a way where everyone around you knew everything about you at all times.

River was wrapped up in his blanket in the far corner, as if trying to stay as far removed from the rest of them as possible. He helpfully said, “Groundlings don’t want to talk to us, haven’t you noticed?”

“Talk to us, or talk to you?” Chime asked, also not helpfully, “because if it’s the latter—”

Jade broke it up with, “This room is too small for an argument, unless someone wants to have an argument with me.”

That stopped the discussion, and as Delin showed them how to dim the light globes with a little lever that caused the luminescent fluid to flow back into a pocket in the moss wall, everyone settled down to sleep, or try to sleep.

Moon was in one of the beds with Jade wrapped around him, the others in the beds or the floor according to inclination. Bramble and Merit had talked Delin into staying with them, and had used some bed cushions to make a pallet for all three of them on the floor.

Jade whispered in Moon’s ear, “I still don’t know if this trip is a good idea or not.”

It wasn’t something she was willing to admit to the others, and truthfully, Moon didn’t know either. He wondered if their clutch had noticed he was gone yet, and buried his face in the warm scales of her neck.

The night was uneventful, and the next day even more so as they passed over the nearly impenetrable mountain-tree canopy of the Reaches. The crew seemed more than content to ignore the Raksura despite Bramble’s determination to make friends and Stone’s determination not to acknowledge that most of the Kishan didn’t want them here.

Moon knew he needed to get a better idea of the whole situation. Vendoin was more gregarious than the others, so that evening he wandered over to where she stood at the railing and took up a position nearby. Not too close, but not so far away that it would make conversation difficult.

The breeze had died and the air was warm and damp, the sinking sun turning the limitless blue sky a gray-violet. The warriors had spent most of the day napping. Below, the great green sea of the Reaches was just starting to give way to sporadic pockets of smaller trees, or open meadow. One meadow contained giant lumpy gray things, at least forty paces tall and more than that wide, that might be sleeping grasseaters with large armor-like scales, some other sort of animal, or a hive or habitation for groundlings. Whatever it was didn’t show any interest in the flying boat passing over it.

The Kish weren’t much worried about anything on the ground. Callumkal had shown them the boat’s weapons earlier in the day, two larger versions of the fire weapon that Rorra had carried at their first meeting. One was concealed in a compartment up in the bow, the other in the stern. Moon thought they would be very helpful as long as you had enough warning to use them.

Vendoin didn’t speak immediately, and Moon was considering what to say for an opening remark, when he felt someone staring at him. He twisted around, scanned the windows in the ridge that ran down the center of the boat, then up to the upper cabin level. He saw Kalam leaning in a window there, not looking out toward the view, but down at Moon. Their gazes met and Kalam withdrew in confusion.

Moon snorted, and turned back to the railing.

Vendoin had noticed. She said, “He’s only curious. Please don’t take offense.”

Moon lifted his shoulders, and then not sure she would understand the gesture, said, “I’m used to being stared at.”

“Are you?” Vendoin turned to regard him more seriously. “I thought Raksuran fertile males lived a secluded life.”

The other Kishan didn’t seem to know much about Raksura, but it sounded like Vendoin at least had bothered to question Delin, even if she hadn’t read his book, like Kalam. “They do, but I wasn’t with a court until a few turns ago.”

Vendoin waited a moment, then said, “Now, you’ve aroused my curiosity. Where were you if not with a court?”

“The court I was born into was destroyed by Fell, when I was too young to remember.” That wasn’t quite true, but the bits and pieces of fragmented memories he had weren’t worth mentioning.

“We have that in common,” Vendoin said, looking out toward the distance again. “My people were driven out of their original home by the Fell three generations ago, and took refuge in the Kishlands.” She turned to him again. “How did you escape?”

At least Vendoin might have a better grasp on how dangerous the Fell were than the other Kish. “A warrior escaped with me and a few Arbora children. They were all killed later, and I was alone, until Stone found me and brought me to Indigo Cloud.”

The rough patches on Vendoin’s face moved. It might be inquiry, puzzlement, or even concern. Moon couldn’t tell. Vendoin said, “But that was the vital time of your development, was it not? From before adolescence to adulthood?”

Moon felt compelled to point out, “It wasn’t by choice.”

“Of course. But did it not make everything . . . very difficult?”

“It did,” Moon admitted. So Vendoin didn’t think he had spent the entire time huddled alone in a forest somewhere, he added, “I traveled, lived in different groundling cities and settlements.”

Vendoin cocked her head, maybe as a gesture of understanding, or maybe of curiosity, it was hard to tell. “As a Raksura?”

“As a groundling. It was in the east, where they’re more afraid of Fell, so I couldn’t show anyone what I was.”

“I see.” Moon wasn’t sure she did, but he wasn’t going to argue. And he thought all her questions gave him an opening to ask some in return. “Have you worked with Callumkal for a long time?”

“Oh, not so long.” Vendoin didn’t appear to mind the question. “My people are called the Hians, and I am a visitor from the Hia Iserae, which is to the north along the Imperial Edge, near the basin of Samin-rel. I was with the archives there, and studied in particular the foundation builders. During the season of spring rain, Callumkal invited me to come to Kedmar and work with him on the map.”

“So you don’t know what the foundation builders looked like?” Moon was wondering if their ruins were just less well-preserved forerunner remains.

“We don’t even know if they were one species, or a collective.” Vendoin sighed. “But they left very little behind, whoever they were. We have fragments of carvings and images and one method of writing that seems to be mainly poetry, and which we are not sure we have deciphered correctly. We have a great deal of speculation, and legends that may be handed down from some dim past, or that may have been constructed by later generations to explain things they did not understand.”

“So do you think the sea-mount city is foundation builder or forerunner?”

“There is great debate over that, such great debate, one would call it arguing and shouting.” Vendoin sounded weary. “The map is on the stones of the foundation builders for a reason. That is all I will admit to.” She made a dismissive gesture. “Others construct what I can only think are fanciful stories about it.”

Moon said, “Does Callumkal think the city was made by the foundation builders?”

“No, he inclines to the theory that it was the forerunners, but I’m not sure he thought so before he encountered Delin’s work.” Vendoin hesitated. “The two others with you, the Arbora. Delin says they are the same species as Raksura, as odd as it seems, and that you come from the same family groups.”