Faintly, apparently reeling from the shock that they were going to live, Magrim asked, “You hope, what? Did you think it would crush us?”
“Nothing, just, nothing,” Moon said, feeling his spines twitching with relief.
Stone nudged him. “Climb up to the steering cabin and tell them we need to turn our lights off. We should be downwind, and if we’re far enough away from the escarpment, the Fell may miss us.”
“Right.” Moon detached himself from the railing and Stone, and made the jump up onto the next cabin roof. He crossed it, and climbed up the next level to the steering cabin.
Jade was already pushing open one of the windows. “Get in here,” she demanded.
“Tell Callumkal to tell the crew to turn off the lights, so the Fell won’t see us,” Moon said first. “Stone thinks we might be far enough away.”
Jade hissed in irritation and turned to relay this to Callumkal. Kellimdar poked his head out the window and said, “We should have thought of that.” He seemed a bit loopy from shock. “Is everyone all right out there?”
“I think so. I was with Stone and Magrim in the bow,” Moon told him. A Janderi hurried out the door at the back of the steering cabin and from the opposite window, Callumkal called down to the Janderan on the other side of the boat to cover their lights.
“Ah. Thank you, all of you.” Kellimdar awkwardly patted Moon’s claws, and withdrew into the cabin.
As an apology for doubting Raksura in general, Moon would take it. It was more graceful and heartfelt than some apologies he had received in the past.
The forward distance-light went out, then the two closer to the stern, then the lights in the windows along this side. The whole chamber was still moving upward, the rush of water down the sides slowing as it neared the surface. The petal door was nearly all the way open.
Jade stepped back to the window. Moon said, “So it looks like these people knew the forerunners.”
“Moon—” Jade hissed in annoyance. “Move over.”
He moved sideways along the steering cabin wall and Jade climbed out the window. She asked, “Why did you stay outside?”
“I don’t know.” Moon didn’t want to argue about it. Like Magrim, he hadn’t wanted to drown inside the boat, and he was just enough of an optimist to think there might have been some last moment way to save them all that he could have accomplished or helped with. It didn’t make a lot of sense, a good consort would have gone to huddle inside, but there it was.
Jade leaned over to look closely at him, then apparently decided to drop it. She sat back against the side of the cabin. “Well, we’re alive. And we’re downwind.”
“And the forerunners were here,” Moon said.
“That too,” Jade agreed, looking upward grimly.
They were only twenty paces below the surface now. Moon heard a couple of doors open, and two Janderan stepped out on the lower deck to get ready to operate the big fire-weapon there. Toward the stern, Balm, River, and Briar hopped up on top of the rear cabin, their spines twitching nervously.
The boat lifted up level with the surface and the water churned under them. There was Fell stench in the wind, and Moon twisted to look back toward the escarpment. It was a vast looming shape, dark against the stars of the night sky. The sunsailer was about three times the distance from it that the island had been. Watching for movement, Moon spotted a kethel wing framed against the lighter clouds, just for an instant, as it passed around the side of the escarpment. “They’re circling it,” he said. “Wonder which flight won.” He thought of the Fell queen, trading Bramble for her ruler. It was hard to remember sometimes that Fell rulers, and perhaps the progenitors, did care for each other, unlike the way they treated their dakti and kethel.
“I’m not sure it matters.” Jade leaned into the window. “Don’t start the motivator; the Fell might hear it.”
“Yes, we’ll let the current take us into the ocean.” Rorra appeared in the window. “Did the walls drop down, can you see?”
The words “into the ocean” made Moon’s spines want to twitch. He felt like they should have a much larger boat for that, maybe one as big as the island, but there wasn’t much choice. He craned his neck, trying to see if the door had closed and the chamber was sinking down again. It had filled with water to push them to the surface, and then once it closed, the water must drain away somewhere. They were lucky it still worked after all this time, but then the forerunner city’s defenses had still worked as well.
The swirling water was calming. “I think so,” Jade told Rorra.
“Then we should start to move.” Rorra pulled away from the window and went back to the steering lever.
In Raksuran, Moon said, “It’s too bad we can’t use the motivator yet, because if that crystal thing does attract Fell, the faster we get away the better.” They needed to be farther away from the escarpment than the Fell could fly in one stretch. If there were no islands out here to rest on, then the Fell wouldn’t be able to follow them.
Jade’s spines signaled grim agreement.
The boat turned gradually away from the shape of the sea-mount and toward the limitless dark where the sea met the ocean. The sails on the two central masts started to unfold, opening out like huge fans.
The scale of the escarpment was so large it was hard to tell if they were moving away from it or not, with no other landmark to measure their progress by. But after a while, Moon realized he could feel the forward movement of the boat. There was no sound but the wind, and the occasional footstep or quiet Kishan voice.
Moon wasn’t aware he had drifted off until Jade nudged him. He jerked awake and she said, “Go inside and sleep, before you fall off the boat.”
“Hah.” He managed to uncurl his cramped legs. The escarpment didn’t look any smaller, but he could tell maybe an hour or more had passed. The sky was still empty and the clouds clearing away, only a few wispy ones to obscure the stars. The boat moved faster, the current still pushing it along. “You’re the one who needs more sleep.”
“When we’re a little farther away.” Jade leaned away from the cabin wall and rolled her shoulders to ease the tension in her furled wings. “I’ll send Stone and some of the others after you. Balm and River are in better shape than the others; they can take the first watch.”
Moon climbed awkwardly inside the steering cabin. Callumkal was holding the steering lever, and Esankel, Kalam, Vendoin, and Rorra sat on the benches against the wall, drooping with exhaustion. Kalam had fallen asleep, his head on Vendoin’s armored shoulder. Keeping his voice low, Callumkal asked Moon, “Nothing in the air?”
“No. Not so far.” He hesitated, not sure he wanted to know. “Are we in the ocean now?”
Rorra stirred a little and said, “We’re in the Blue Drop, where the sea meets the ocean. At dawn, you’ll be able to see it.”
Moon didn’t ask how she knew, whether it was because she was a sealing or a navigator. He stepped out of the steering cabin into the dark passage beyond, and found his way down the stairs.
On the lowest deck, where the cabins didn’t have windows, some of the lights were still lit. All the Kish-Jandera he glimpsed through the doorways were asleep, lying on bench-beds. In their cabin, Merit and Bramble were curled up together on a bench, and Delin sat on a floor cushion, a sheaf of papers in a leather folder on his lap. He was frowning intently at the wall. As Moon came in, he blinked up at him, as if he had been so absorbed in something, he had forgotten anyone else was alive. Delin shook his head a little, and said, “All is well?”