The Cloud Roads (10 page)

Stone watched him a long moment. His blue eyes, clear and clouded, were as unreadable as ever. He said, “We need to talk in private.”

There was a confused stir as some of their audience took that as a dismissal, but Stone turned and walked outside to the atrium. Moon went after him, stepping out of the light of the glow-moss into the dark garden space and the heavy scent of wet earth and recent rain. His shoulders twitched in relief; it was enough for the moment just to be out of reach of all those unfriendly and curious eyes.

Stone didn’t speak; he just shifted and jumped straight up and climbed the side of the building, a great dark shape, big wings half-furled and tail lashing.

Moon waited until Stone leapt off the building into the air. He shifted and followed, climbing up until he could drop off a ledge and catch the breeze with his wings. The crescent moon was mostly shrouded by clouds, but he could see Stone had already crossed the dark stretch of the river and the terraced fields. Stone landed on one of the higher hills, treeless and unoccupied by anything except a few flat rocks arranged in a rough circle. Moon banked around and landed a careful distance away, well out of the reach of a sudden lunge.

Stone shifted back to groundling, then sat down on one of the rocks, facing toward the dark shape of the colony. He moved slowly, like his body ached, like old groundlings with bad joints moved.

Moon hesitated then shifted, too. The wind was cool enough to make him glad he had accepted the new clothes. He could scent other Raksura in the air, probably sentries, but none were close. Stone didn’t move, and after a moment Moon walked up through the wet grass to stand near him.

The pyramid was studded with light from doorways, openings, and air shafts, shining down to reflect off the dark surface of the river. In the night the whole structure looked vulnerable—too open, indefensible.

Up here, the only sound was the wind moving through leaves. Into the quiet, Stone said, “I meant to tell you at Sky Copper, but I changed my mind. If you knew, you might not have come here with me. And I needed you to come here with me.”

Moon felt a little of the tension go out of his back. At least Stone wasn’t trying to pretend it had been some kind of mistake and not a deliberate omission. Moon folded his arms, looking down the dark river. His own thoughts weren’t so easy to sort out.

Becoming one of the warriors who defended the colony from Fell and other threats was one thing, but this... was something else. And he hadn’t forgotten that a queen’s power wasn’t just theoretical; a queen could keep him from shifting, keep him grounded, as long as he was close to her. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say, and was a little surprised when it was, “The last woman I was with poisoned me so her people could drag me off to be killed by giant vargits.”

It was hard to tell in the dark, but Stone seemed to take that in thoughtfully.

He shrugged. “Most groundlings think consorts look like Fell.”

Moon’s grimace was bitter. “I’d been with her for months. She said she wanted a baby. My baby.”

“Oh.” Stone apparently felt he couldn’t argue with that. “Are you going to leave?”

Moon took a sharp breath, swallowing back the first impulsive reply. He paced away, looking down on the terraced fields, the plants moving gently in the breeze, the moonlight catching a glint of water between the rows. It would help if he knew what he wanted. “What, are you saying you wouldn’t keep me here?”

Stone snorted. His voice dry, he said, “We both know you can get away from me if you put your mind to it.” He sat up straight and stretched extravagantly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Even if I was that stupid, the Arbora wouldn’t stand for it, especially the mentors. Besides, the court doesn’t need a prisoner, it needs consorts.”

From what Moon had seen, the court apparently differed in that opinion and didn’t feel it needed either. Moon said, “I’ve already been told to leave.”

“By a warrior called River?”

Moon rolled his shoulders and didn’t answer, staring stubbornly at the dark fields. Stone’s occasional ability to read minds was only one of his annoying qualities.

“That was a guess,” Stone said. “I told you about royal clutches. Sometimes they’re all male, and the fledglings who don’t develop into consorts become ordinary warriors. Amber was Pearl’s sister queen, and River came from one of her royal clutches.” He added, with a trace of acid, “I don’t solicit River’s opinion, no matter how much he thinks I ought to.”

That might be true, but it didn’t change anything. River wasn’t the only one who wanted Moon gone.

Moon realized he could hear sound rising from across the river, a chorus of notes, high and low, blending in harmony and mingled with the wind and the gentle rush of the river. He went still, staring toward the colony, the breath catching in his throat. He couldn’t make out words, but the sound seemed to gather in his body, resonating off his bones, as if it were playing him like an instrument.

Stone lifted his head, listening. “They’re singing, Arbora to Aeriat, and back again.” A single voice, high and pure, lifted to weave through the others, then died away. Moon felt sweat break out all over his body, prickling on his skin in the cool air. Apparently unaffected, Stone said, “That was Jade. Pearl never sings anymore.”

Moon turned half away, suppressing the urge to shiver and twitch. The singing felt... alien, and he resented the way it seemed to pull at him. It could pull all it wanted; whatever that was, he wasn’t a part of it.

He wondered just how close the Cordans’ camp had been to the Star Aster Court, how close he had been to finding other Raksura. Or how close they had been to finding him. Not that that would have left him any better off than he was now. It sounded as though Star Aster had no need for extra consorts; having seen the prevailing opinion of feral solitaries here, he knew they would have driven him off. He spoke the thought that had become increasingly obvious all day long, with every interaction he had had. “I don’t belong here.” Maybe if he had been younger, there would have been a chance, but not now.

Stone made a derisive noise. “You’re afraid you don’t belong here. There’s a difference.”

Moon seethed inwardly but held his temper, knowing it would give Stone a victory if he lost it. “I’ve been walking into new places all my life. I know when I don’t belong.”

Stone sounded wry. “You’ve been here half a day, and for most of that you were asleep.”

Moon said sourly, “I like to make quick decisions.”

Stone pushed to his feet with a groan, looking across at the pyramid. If Flower was right, Stone had been with Pearl all afternoon trying to convince her of things she apparently didn’t want to hear. “All I’m going to ask is that you stay until I convince Pearl to give way. I want the court to leave this colony and go back to the west, to the home forest. They won’t even consider it unless we have a consort—at least a prospective consort—for Jade. Once we have a secure colony, we’ll be in a better position to get a consort to come over from another court.” He added, his voice grim, “It won’t take long. Things will come to a head soon.”

Moon wished he could find an objection to it, but it just didn’t seem that much to ask. Staying here for a short time, even if he was threatened, stared at, and talked about, wouldn’t hurt him. Not much. But there was the other problem. “What about the Fell?”

“The place of the Raksura in the Three Worlds is to kill Fell.”

Moon looked at Stone, not certain he was serious.

Stone shrugged, as if he wasn’t saying anything particularly odd. “They’re predators, just like Tath, Ghobin, a hundred others. We should be hunting them, not the other way around.” He shook his head. “After Pearl’s reign, we don’t have a lot of allies except for Sky Copper. I’d been talking to their reigning queen about combining with us.”

Moon thought Stone wasn’t the only one in the Indigo Cloud Court who had been talking. “Then someone warned the Fell you wanted to join with Sky Copper. Someone here.”

“I thought of that, too.” Stone’s voice held an edge now. “You staying?”

Moon looked at the colony; all those people, so vulnerable in the dark. “I’ll stay, and I’ll let you use me for this. But I won’t promise anything afterward.”

“We’ll see,” Stone said, amused rather than grateful. “Maybe you’ll make another quick decision.”

Moon hissed at him, shifted, and leapt into the air.

Flying back across the river to the colony, he avoided the teachers’ court and the other lighted areas. The voices still rose and fell, but the effect wasn’t as loud or as penetrating, as if many of the singers had lapsed into silence.

Moon landed on a ledge and went to one of the air shafts he had found earlier, climbing down, taking the back way into the living quarters. He hoped that if anyone detected his presence, they would take the hint and leave him alone. The hall was empty, and he went back to the bower Petal had shown him. He had a warm place to sleep, at least, and he should take advantage of it while he could.

But as he climbed the steps to the little room, he paused. Someone else had been up here, and it hadn’t been Petal or Bell, or even River or Drift; the unfamiliar scent still hung in the air.

Moon had left his old clothes on a basket next to the robe Petal had loaned him. There was now something on top of them, a roll of blue fabric. He poked it warily, and when nothing leapt out at him, unwrapped it. Inside was a belt, of dark butter-soft leather, tooled with red in a serpentine pattern, the round buckles of red gold. Attached to it was a sheathed knife. He drew it, finding the hilt was carved horn, and the blade was something’s tooth, sharp as glass with a tensile strength like fine metal.

He thought of the bracelet he had found in Stone’s pack, made of the same rich red gold as these buckles, and how Flower had said something about a token Jade had sent, to be given to the consort Stone might bring back from the Star Aster court. And he recalled Stone’s comment:
I’m bringing a present back for my great-great-granddaughter.
Moon let his breath out in a bitter hiss.
Very funny.

Moon sheathed the knife and re-wrapped it and the belt, and left the bundle halfway down the steps of the bower. Hopefully that made it clear that he wasn’t accepting the gift, bribe, wage for selling himself into servitude, or whatever it was. Hopefully Stone would tell Jade or whoever had left it that Moon had said he would cooperate, that this wasn’t necessary.

He climbed into the bed, listening to the court’s song as it gradually diminished and finally faded away.

When Moon woke the next morning, he lay still for a while, watching dust drift in a ray of light from an air shaft. He wasn’t looking forward to the day, mostly because he had no place here and no idea what to do.

He had slept badly; even if he hadn’t been half-expecting River to return for another try at him, the noise had kept him awake. The openings between the thick walls and the ceiling allowed sound to travel from the other bowers, making him even more hyper-aware of quiet voices, deep breathing, and the soft sounds of sex. It hadn’t been any different at the Cordans’ camp, and he knew his nerves were only on edge because these were strangers, some of them actively hostile.

The noise hadn’t seemed to bother anyone else. Though if there had been two or three friendly bodies in this bed like there obviously were in some of the other bowers, Moon wouldn’t have noticed it either.

He decided to do what he would usually do anywhere else and go hunting. It would give him some space to think and also make it clear he wasn’t depending on the court’s generosity for food.

When he climbed out of the bed, he saw the wrapped knife and belt still lay where he had left them, undisturbed. But on the step below it was another bundle, a bigger one. Unrolling it, he saw it was a fur blanket, the long soft hair dyed a shade of purple close to the haze of twilight.

With an annoyed grimace, Moon rolled it back up and left it on the step. If this went on, he was going to have to climb over a pile just to get out the door.

He went through the hall and down to the common room. As he stepped out of the stairwell, there was a sudden flurry of movement and a flash of blue and silver-gray disappeared through the outer door. The people left in the room, including Chime, Bell, and a few he didn’t know, all tried to pretend that nothing had happened, with varying degrees of flustered confusion.

Moon had the feeling he knew who that blue and gray figure was: the woman he had seen on the ledge of the pyramid yesterday with a slim build and a mane shape and scale color different from anyone else. If that was Jade, then the best thing he could do was follow her example and make himself scarce. At least the atrium was bright with sunlight, promising a good flying day. He cleared his throat and said, “I’m going hunting. Is there any place I should stay away from?”

They stared blankly at him. Puzzled, Bell asked, “What do you mean?”

“Territories? Preserves? Places that are reserved for other people, or where you’re letting the game increase?” He wished they would stop looking at him like that. This was a perfectly rational question.

One of the women he hadn’t met yet said, “Aeriat don’t... don’t usually hunt, not when they’re in the colony.” She must be a warrior herself. She had a slim but strong build, with dark skin and curly honey-colored hair tied back from a sharp-featured face. “That’s what the hunters do.”

Moon set his jaw, trying to control his annoyance.
Yes, even I figured that one out.
“Where I come from, if Aeriat don’t hunt, they don’t eat.”

Chime stood hastily. “I’ll go with you.”

Flustered, the woman followed him a moment later. There was something just a little awkward about her that made Moon think she was young, maybe not that far from girlhood. She said, “I’m Balm. I’ll go, too.”

Moon kept his expression noncommittal. He had meant to go alone for a chance to explore the area and to think, but if he was going to be saddled with guards, he wasn’t going to let his irritation show. He just turned and walked out to the atrium, leaving them to follow or not. The sky was a clear blue vault, no clouds in sight.