Moon let out his breath. He hated to say it, but River was right.
Stone rubbed his face. “Of course there are.”
Jade hissed in exasperation. “That’s all we need.”
Moon asked Jade, “Did you get close enough to see them?”
“Yes. They probably spotted us, but they didn’t try to come after us. They were dug in under an old ruin and we only saw two kethel.”
“Did the ruin look like it might have been part of the city, made by the same people?” Kalam asked.
Balm glanced at Jade, and spread her hands. “It was a structure made out of coral, looked fairly old.”
“How many were in the flight you saw?” Jade asked.
“We didn’t see them yet.” Moon looked at Rorra, wondering if she was still willing to carry out their plan. “Stone picked up their stench in the current.”
“I’m going to go take a look now.” Rorra sat down on the bench and started to unlace her boots. “And yes, I’m sure.”
Moon saw Jade’s confusion, then her expression cleared as she remembered what Rorra was. She said, “If we get you killed, Callumkal isn’t going to like it.”
Rorra glanced up, her smile thin. “Callumkal knows me too well.” She pulled her first boot off, and Moon saw her fins for the first time, folded and pinched together to make a rough foot-shape to fill the boot. They were dark with bruises and scar-tissue. It looked so painful it made Moon’s spines twitch in distress.
Kalam said, “Rorra’s careful. She won’t get hurt.” It sounded like a combination of loyal support and fervent hope to Moon.
Moon was trying to think of all the possibilities. Rorra’s scent wouldn’t matter in the water. The Fell wouldn’t be able to detect it there like a sealing would. “How fast can you swim?”
Rorra pulled off her other boot. On that leg the fins were missing, the limb ending in a rounded stump of scar tissue. “Not as fast as you can fly, so don’t expect me back immediately.”
Moon turned to Jade. “We need to get her closer to where Stone scented the Fell. Otherwise she’ll have to search for them and it will give them more time to find her first.”
Rorra stripped off her shirt and started to unbuckle her pants. The skin of her torso had only faintly visible scale patterns, but there were wide gill slits on either side of her chest. Magrim and Kalam both looked away. The Kishan, at least the Kish-Jandera, appeared to have a mild nudity taboo. That was probably another reason they had so much trouble getting used to Raksura.
Jade glanced at Stone. “Can you take her?”
“Sure.” Stone saw Rorra’s dubious expression, and said, “I won’t drop you from too high.”
“Lovely.” Rorra grimaced. She glanced around, saw Kalam and Magrim were still studiously looking away, and held out a hand to Moon. “I need help standing.”
He shifted to his groundling form to keep from accidentally poking her, stepped in and put an arm around her to help her stand. She looked at Stone. “How do we do this?”
Stone eyed her appraisingly, then smiled just a little. “Jump in, but stay on the surface. I’ll scoop you up.”
“What a comforting thought,” Rorra said, and jerked her head toward the rail.
Moon helped her limp over to it. Balm stepped up to take her hand and steady her from the other side. Rorra breathed, “Thank you.” Then she leaned forward and flipped over the rail and into the water.
Her body slipped through the low waves, fast and sleek, even with the missing fins. Stone waited until she was about fifty paces away, then he stepped up onto the rail and dove off the boat. He shifted before he hit the water and slid smoothly under the surface.
Confused, Kalam said, “I thought he was going to fly.”
Watching with narrowed eyes, Jade said, “He’s building up speed.”
Moon could see it too, the rapidly moving line of ripples just below the surface, angling away from the boat and Rorra. Then the ripples disappeared. Chime said, “I think he’s going to—”
The big dark body broke the surface with a powerful flap of wings and launched itself upward. Kalam and Magrim gasped. Stone caught the wind with the second flap and lifted smoothly into the air. Spray showered the boat.
“That was impressive,” Balm admitted.
It was. Moon wasn’t sure he would be able to do it.
Stone gained some height, water still sliding off his wings, then banked around. “I can’t see him,” Kalam said, rubbing his eyes in frustration. “I mean, I can see him, but I can’t make out detail.” He nodded toward the other Raksura. “I can see all of you fine.”
“I can’t see him either,” Moon said. He had always just considered it something that happened to line-grandfathers. No one else had ever remarked on it. He asked Chime, “Why is that?”
“I don’t know.” Chime shrugged his spines. “There isn’t a lot of mentor lore on line-grandfathers. For one thing, they’re rare, and for another . . .” He gestured toward Stone. “They don’t like to answer questions.”
Stone lined up for a dive toward Rorra. He flew low over the water, one clawed hand reaching down for her. It had to be frightening from Rorra’s perspective, even though she knew what was about to happen. Stone’s hand folded gently around her and pulled her out of the water. He tucked her against his chest, tilted up again, and banked around toward the direction where he had detected the Fell stench.
Jade sighed, and glanced around the little boat. “Well, we have a wait.”
They waited most of the afternoon. Moon had flown a little distance away and gone fishing, both because he needed to stretch his wings after the injury and because the dried fish from the sunsailer’s stores hadn’t been very satisfying. Magrim had admitted that the settlement he came from in Kish liked their fish raw, too. He got involved with showing Kalam how to slice one up and pick out the best bits. After they ate, the Raksura took turns napping, curling up on the warm deck. By unspoken consensus, they were getting ready for what could be another violent night.
At one point, while the others were resting, Jade told Moon, “Song apologized to me.”
“That’s good.” Moon could tell she meant a real apology, where she and Song had actually talked it over, and not just that Song had stopped arguing because Jade was the queen. “Was something bothering her?”
Jade shrugged her spines a little. “She’s been more aggressive, lately. It’s just a sign she’s growing up, wanting a more important place in the court. She’ll settle down.” Jade flicked a fish scale at Balm, sleeping nearby. “Balm was like that.”
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.