“No,” Lithe replied. “Too much could hurt him. Let him rest, and we’ll see how he is.”
His head pillowed on Stone’s thigh, Moon mumbled, “Why did she do it? I was lying when I said I remembered her.”
“We don’t know,” Stone said, and ruffled his hair. “Go to sleep.”
Moon opened his eyes sometime later to a fall of dawn light from the opening to the central well. A stir of air carried the damp scent of the waterfall. He was curled in a nest of blankets near the hearth, his clothes were soaked with sweat, and he felt as if he had slept face down in cold mud all night.
Stone lay a short distance away, sprawled on his back and growling faintly in his sleep. They were alone except for an Arbora, an older male with dark copper skin and dark curly hair, who sat on the other side of the hearth. Moon recognized him as one of the mentors who had helped Lithe last night. At least he assumed it was last night. The bedding had been changed and the place cleaned; it smelled of nothing now except the waterfall and the green scents drifting in from the central well.
The Arbora said, “I’m Auburn. How are you feeling?”
Moon croaked, “Hollow.” He had a vague dream-like memory of having to get up in the middle of the night for an urgent visit to the latrine in the bathing room. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience. He still felt like he had lost some important internal organs in the process.
“Ah.” Auburn set a kettle on the heating stones. “I have a tea that should help, very mild. Will you take some?”
Moon started to say yes, then remembered that accepting food from Opal Night Arbora was what got him into this. Auburn seemed to realize that, and said, with a wry smile, “I’ll drink a cup first.”
Moon nodded. Watching Auburn sort pressed leaves into the pot, he asked, “If nobody poisons anybody here, why did you have an antidote to what Russet gave me?”
“We have an antidote to tree-asp stings,” Auburn corrected. “The hunters and soldiers get bitten occasionally. Since you actually had the venom inside you, we had to modify that simple and combine it with something that would protect your stomach and gut while the antidote was working.” He poured the warm water into the pot, and added grimly, “Fortunately, Russet is not a mentor, and didn’t know how to make a truly effective poison from the venom.”
If that wasn’t effective, Moon would have hated to see one that was.
Stone snorted and sat straight up, so suddenly that Auburn flinched. Moon was still too half-conscious to flinch. Stone rubbed his face, and squinted at Moon. “You all right?”
Moon nodded and shrugged. He felt terrible, but he was pretty certain he wasn’t dying anymore. Stone yawned.
It didn’t look like Stone had had a very good night either. Considering the condition Moon had been in, he was glad Stone was the only one to see it besides the mentors. “Where’s Jade and the others?”
Auburn said, “Malachite made everyone leave except your line-grandfather to give us room to work. Lithe and Reed are taking their turn to rest.” He poured a cup of tea, drank it, then poured a second and handed it to Moon. “I’ll go and tell them all you’re awake. I know they’ve been very worried, even after you took a turn for the better last night.”
As Auburn got to his feet and left the bower, Moon sniffed the tea cautiously, then tasted it. It was warm water barely flavored with tea, but when he drank the cup it soothed his dry throat, and his stomach decided it might live after all. “What happened to Russet?” he asked Stone.
“Nothing, yet. They had to wait to see if you recovered.” Stone scratched his head vigorously, still trying to wake himself up. “It’s a bad situation for the whole court.”
Moon refused to feel guilty, or tried to. Every Raksuran court he visited seemed to face trouble because of him, sooner or later. He just hoped nothing had happened to Viridian Sea. And while Tempest’s sister Halcyon had ended up fighting to the death, and he knew warriors were punished with exile and became solitaries, he had never seen or heard of an Arbora doing anything bad enough to warrant any punishment whatsoever. He had never even seen one get the slap to the head usually meted out to warriors for their transgressions. “So… what are they going to do to her?”
Stone gave him a look. “She tried to kill a consort. The only consort left in the reigning queen’s bloodline. What do you think they’re going to do to her?”
Moon wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the blankets and sleep, but there was too much that had to be done.
Auburn returned with Lithe and two more mentors, who came to check Moon over again and to advise that he sleep for the rest of the day. Moon sent them away to tell Malachite that whatever she planned to do with Russet, he wanted to be there, and to tell her he was going back to the groundling city to talk to them again about the Fell unless somebody came up with a better plan.
He had been thinking of Malachite as an enemy. It had finally hit home at some point last night, maybe when she had touched his face, that what Celadon and Umber and everyone else had told him was true. That she might be a powerful ally.
She already meant to stop the Fell. Getting her to stop them before they destroyed Aventera was going to be the problem. Once Moon had that figured out, getting her to let him return to Indigo Cloud with Jade shouldn’t be nearly as difficult. He hoped.
One thing he desperately needed before any of this was a bath, and he was standing under the cool water channel when Chime walked into the bathing room with a bundle under his arm. Chime said, “Good, you really are better. From the message you sent with the Arbora, we thought so, but it’s a relief to see it.”
“Where’s Jade?”
“In the queens’ hall with Malachite. She sent the rest of us back to the flying boat to rest, but she stayed.” He regarded Moon intently. “So… how are you?”
“Fine.” At Chime’s expression, Moon admitted, “Not so good. But we don’t have time.”
Chime hesitated, then clearly decided there was no point in arguing. He put the bundle down on the flat stone table used for drying clothes. “Your mother sent you some gifts. If you don’t take them, she might kill me. I mean, that was just the impression I got.”
Moon stepped out of the pool and dried off. He felt more alert, more able to at least get his eyes all the way open. He hadn’t tried to shift yet, and he still felt too weak to make the effort. He felt too weak to be standing up, actually, and sat down on the edge of the bathing pool. “What did she send?”
Chime opened the bundle and pulled out clothes, laying them out on the drying rock. They were of a very fine material but sturdy, like the cloth Indigo Cloud had made at the old colony. The shirt was black and the pants a dark gray, and there was a belt made of a very soft, dark mottled hide, set with tiny rounds of bone intricately carved into flowers. There was also a long robe, the dark fabric woven in strips of different textures, the collar trimmed with a heavy brocade. It was possibly the most expensive looking garment Moon had ever seen in his life.
Watching Moon’s lack of reaction, Chime said, “This is nice, and probably meant well, and accepting presents from your birthqueen doesn’t obligate you to anything—”
“It’s all right, Chime,” Moon said, too weary to be really exasperated. “I won’t send them back.”