“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.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The 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.