“That’s one way to put it.” They didn’t know how many people the creature could fool at one time. It might be a handful of Raksura and Fell, it might be hundreds.
“And it attached a Fell to its own body?” Rorra appeared to fully realize just how horrible this was. “To consume it?”
“Maybe.” Moon tried to think of a way to describe it. “We saw a predator once that attached parts of its prey to its own body, to be able to do things that they could do.”
Rorra’s frown deepened in confusion. “How did the predator do that?”
“We don’t know. We had to kill it before we had a chance to ask.” At her expression he added, “I don’t think it would have told us anyway.”
She hesitated. “I ask about this because I want the expedition to be prepared.”
“That’s good,” Moon told her. He didn’t think it was possible to be prepared for some things, but it was a good thought.
Rorra said, “You’re different than I thought you’d be,” and abruptly left the cabin.
Moon decided that if he had almost gotten into a fight with someone who wasn’t even trying to argue with him, he had better check on the others.
He found his way to the common room without running into anyone. There were several Kishan inside, sitting on stools or benches. They had the same dark roughly-textured skin and curly dark hair as Callumkal and Kalam, but were all shorter and heavy-set. They weren’t talking or moving, and after a moment he realized that was because Bramble was in the room.
She was studying the maps mounted on the walls. The Kishan kept glancing at her, then down at the floor, then at each other, then at her again.
In her groundling form, Bramble still didn’t look harmless. She only came up to Moon’s shoulder, but she was wearing her work clothes, a light sleeveless shirt and pants cut off at the knee, and her stocky build and the muscles in her shoulders and forearms were obvious. Despite the flower someone had stuck into her hair before they left the colony, she looked like she could pick up one of the Kishan and easily toss them across the room. In her scaled and clawed form, she could easily rip them limb from limb, but nobody needed to mention that.
Then Bramble turned to the Kishan, pointed at one of the maps, and, speaking Altanic, said, “Is this where you’re from?”
The Kishan hesitated, but a brave one stood and said, “No, not exactly.” The silver-trimmed dark blue coat was open and there were four protuberances on her chest that looked like breasts, so Moon assumed she was female. She went to the map and stood barely a pace away from Bramble, though Moon could tell she was nervous. She pointed to the map. “Most of us are from Kedmar-Jandera. That city is the nearest port and trade capital, Irev-Jandera.”
Bramble bit her lip, studying the map. “All the cities are connected? You’re all called Kishan?”
“Yes. Well, there are a lot of different groups, and species, in all the different cities.” She indicated the others in the room. “Our species is called Janderi, and we’re related to the Janderan. We’re from the Jandera, which was where the Kish trade empire began. But in general, we’re all called Kishan. Or Kish-Jandera, if you’re just talking about us and the Janderan.”
“So . . .” Bramble hesitated, then evidently decided to just ask. “How do you decide what to do? When you’re all so spread out like that?”
Once it had turned into a general discussion and lecture about the history of the Kishan trade empire, and how groundlings governed themselves without queens or courts, Moon slipped away down the corridor. It was interesting, but he should probably find Jade.
He took the stairs up to the deck, and came out into bright sunlight and a steady breeze to see Jade still with Balm and Briar, talking to Callumkal and Vendoin. The two warriors had shifted to groundling, the wind catching at their curling hair. Moon saw Stone, Chime, Merit, and Delin up in the bow, leaning on the rail and looking down. It was tempting to join them, but Moon decided it was probably his duty to stand next to Jade and look decorative.
As he reached her, Callumkal turned to lead the way through a doorway in the ridge. Balm murmured to Moon, “He’s going to show us how the ship works.”
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?”