Then Rorra grabbed Briar and jerked her up, dragging Chime along with her. Chime’s tail slapped Moon in the face and Moon grabbed it, and was pulled straight up the wall with them.
His ears popped and the world was suddenly right side up again. There was a ledge just above his head and Jade leaned down from it, grabbed his collar flange, and hauled him up and over.
Moon braced himself on the floor, still shaken. A quick glance around showed him that the others were all here, in various states of disarray, and that this wasn’t a ledge, but a large space, a gallery looking down on the hall below. The walls he could see were carved with the same sort of designs, the ceiling also curved. It hadn’t been here before, he was certain of it; whenever Stone had held the light up, it had reflected off a solid curved ceiling. He said, “We were right.”
Jade squeezed his wrist and stood. “Bramble, remind me to thank Bone for insisting you come along.”
Bramble clambered to her feet and lifted the net-light. “You would have gotten here eventually, I just shortened the trip a little,” she said, but her spines flicked in pleasure.
Chime crawled to the edge of the gallery and looked down. “I can’t see the hall we were in, but it must be down there.”
Rorra pushed to her feet, swaying as she got her balance. “There’s one of those stairwells, going down. The last we passed, perhaps?” She took a step nearer, peering into the dark, and pointed toward the far end of the room. “And there’s one going up.”
“Careful,” Delin said, as Bramble gave him a hand up. “Do not get too close to the downward stairs. We know the trap extended up some distance.”
Moon got to his feet, giving Chime and Root a hand up. Briar and Song were already standing, looking around the room cautiously. Stone hooked the net-light around a claw and took a quick turn around the big room. Then he shifted down to his groundling form. “There’s no way out of here but those stairwells.”
Jade considered the stairwell that led downward warily. “I don’t think we can risk it. It must go straight down to the hall we just left.”
“Back into the trap,” Delin agreed.
“I don’t want to do that again,” Root said fervently. There were murmurs and spine twitches of agreement all around.
As the others talked, Moon took one of the lights and went to the wall, following it all around the room. Briar and Song trailed behind him. There was nothing that indicated any secret ways out, not even a crack. At the opposite side, Stone met him with a dry expression. “I tried that already.”
“I know.” Moon controlled a spine twitch of frustration. He lowered his voice. Briar and Song were standing close and watching worriedly. “The chances of what’s up there being . . .” Another terrible prisoner, another creature so dangerous a whole city had to be abandoned to imprison it. And whoever might have left it here wasn’t nearly as good at making impenetrable prisons as the forerunners.
“Yeah. There’s a chance.” Stone looked away. “I wish they’d just killed the damn things.”
There had to be some reason they didn’t, Moon thought.
“So the trap must have been there to protect that stairwell,” Chime was saying, his scaled brow furrowed.
With a growl in her voice, Jade said, “I suppose there’s no way to tell the trap that all we want is to get our boat out of this damn city.”
Rorra shook her head in frustration. “No, they clearly thought anyone who came in here after the city was deserted would be searching for whatever is up there.”
“We have to go up, don’t we?” Root said, with a bleak droop of his spines. “What if there’s another trap?”
“We can’t stay here.” Jade turned to the stairwell. “We’ve already been gone too long.”
Bramble’s expression was grim. “The others will come after us. They’ll follow our scent right up that hall.”
Moon exchanged a look with Stone. Then Jade said what they were both thinking, “I just hope they haven’t already. I hope Merit was able to scry this.”
Merit had felt the sun cross the sky high above the sea-mount. He and everyone else on board had gone from impatience for the Raksura to return to the certainty that something was badly wrong. His scrying was more frustrating than ever, and had yielded nothing but flashes of darkness. I have to get closer, he thought. He glared at Balm and River. Whether some people like it or not.
The two warriors had both woken up angry, and after nearly a full day of increasingly anxious waiting, they wanted to kill each other. After listening to them argue, Merit wanted to let them.
“I can move faster alone,” Balm said to River, her spines lifted dangerously. “I don’t need to be slowed down.”
Balm wanted to go after Jade and the others by herself, which might have seemed sensible on the surface. If everyone who went into the city disappeared, reducing the number of people going in might be a good idea. But Merit didn’t think it was practical. What if she needed to send someone back for help? What if she ended up trapped somewhere because there wasn’t anyone to help her at the right moment? It was why Raksura never traveled alone.
River’s reasons for objecting were entirely different. “You don’t trust me,” he growled. “What do you think I’ll do, rip your throat out and leave you somewhere?”
Balm eyed him coldly. “Why don’t you try it now, so I can kill you and get on with finding them.”
Merit hissed, annoyed. “Balm, you don’t really think that.” He had expected Balm to be half out of her mind with fear for Jade and Moon and the others, but River was almost as bad. And neither wanted to admit it.
They both ignored him. River said, “I don’t want to fight you. You’re the one who wants that, because you think it’ll erase what happened to you, how the Fell used you. I’m not the only one who remembers that, Balm.”
Balm’s spines went rigid with fury. Merit agreed that it was too close to home and also an unfair strike. Merit said, “River, that’s not helping.” Stupid warriors, he thought. He needed to be more sympathetic to Chime’s situation; it must be agony to be like this now after living all your previous life as a sensible Arbora.
Again, they both ignored him. Kalam stood in the doorway, watching anxiously. Callumkal had been in and out as they waited, increasingly worried, trying to make his own plans with the other groundlings. He had said grimly, “At least we know the Fell can’t get in, or they would have been on us by now.” Unable to wait for the Raksura to return, a group of Kishan were getting ready to take their flying packs and try to follow the canal to find a way out.
Balm stepped deliberately close to River, and he bristled. Balm said, “You made sure everyone remembered it. You took advantage of what it did to me, treated me like nothing to prove to your idiot followers how strong you were—”
River sneered. “You let me.”
It wasn’t doing Merit any good to think what Jade, Moon, or Stone would do in this situation. If they were here, this wouldn’t be happening. He asked himself what Flower would do.
As Balm’s claws flexed, Merit shoved in between them. He was in his groundling form, small and vulnerable. Balm was wearing a copper bead necklace and River a bronze armband Pearl had given him. Merit slammed a hand on Balm’s chest and grabbed River’s arm. He didn’t quite hit his targets, but he got close enough.