Jade stood. Her gaze swept over him as if she couldn’t quite believe he was on his feet and moving. “Are you all right?”
He nodded, and drew the robe around him more tightly. He was shivering and still felt feverish. “Malachite killed her.”
Jade took a sharp breath. “I see.”
Stone grimaced and took the kettle off the hearth to pour tea. “It’s a bad thing, but I don’t see that Malachite had a choice.”
“Russet admitted everything,” Auburn said, and steadied Moon as he sank down to sit on a pile of handy cushions. “Well, almost everything. But she was under no Fell influence.”
Jade sat next to Moon, watching him with concern. Then her brows lifted. She touched the ivory disk on his chest with a delicate claw, frowning. “What is that?”
“Malachite gave it to me.” Moon turned it so she could see the stain. “It’s got blood on it, so…”
“Oh.” Jade withdrew her hand, her spines flicking in consternation. Then she asked, “Did Russet say what it was that she was afraid you had remembered?”
“Yes.” His voice was hoarse again. Moon took the cup of tea Stone passed him and drank it before he told her what Russet had said. “I must have seen her kill the others, but I don’t remember anything.”
“Did you know Russet?” Chime asked Auburn. “I mean, was she your friend, or…”
“I don’t know why she would do this,” Auburn answered the unspoken question. He looked drawn and weary. “I think the realization of what she had done, the guilt and the fear of it being revealed, the deaths of so many in the court… I think it turned her mind, and she was canny enough to hide it from us all this time. I don’t think the real Russet, the Russet we knew, survived the attack.”
Everyone was silent as they considered that uncomfortable thought.
Jade stirred and tugged absently at the hem of a cushion. “But it can’t be her who told the new Fell flight about the crossbreeds. If they had no connection with her mind…”
Stone rubbed his eyes wearily. “It means there’s someone else here who did.”
Auburn’s expression was even more grim. “The mentors are searching among those who returned from the old colony.” He shook his head. “After all this time, and the death of the Fell rulers, I don’t think an influence could have lasted. It didn’t with Russet.”
Moon heard light steps in the passage, then Lithe appeared in the doorway. He assumed she was here to take Auburn’s place, but she hesitated a moment. “I wanted to speak to you all, about the Fell.”
Jade glanced at Moon, and he nodded. She told Lithe, “Come and sit down.”
Lithe crossed behind Auburn and took a seat on a cushion, facing them all. She took a deep breath. “I’m under suspicion, because the ruler hiding in the groundling city told Celadon that the Fell came here for crossbreeds. Everyone wonders why this flight came here, now, after so long, if they weren’t called by one of us. By a crossbreed. Because I’m a mentor, I’m the most likely.”
It might be most likely, but Moon doubted it. Maybe that made him a fool, but he just couldn’t see Lithe as a Fell spy. Part of it was her physical appearance; she didn’t look any more like the groundling form of a dakti than Moon or Jade did. The other factor was the look in her eyes. She didn’t have that Fell emptiness, the feeling that you were talking to a shell that was only intermittently filled with personality. He had seen too many rulers close up to mistake that.
He reminded himself that Russet hadn’t seemed suspicious, either.
Jade tilted her head, watching Lithe with a thoughtful intensity. Lithe didn’t flinch from it, but the bronze of her cheeks darkened in a flush. Jade said, “But why would you? You don’t seem to have been badly treated here.”
“I haven’t been, Malachite made sure of that. This is my home, my court, why should I betray it?” Lithe spread her hands. “But I’m half-Fell. It’s not that I don’t understand their suspicion. Somehow this flight knows about us, knows that we’re here. Malachite is certain none of the rulers of the flight that attacked us survived. We should have no connection to the Fell, no way for them to find us.”
Stone said, “The Fell know their own. Rulers can sense each other over long distances.”
“But I would feel it,” Lithe protested. She pressed a hand to her chest. “I’m a mentor. I would know. I’m sure I would. And if they can’t touch my mind, how could they touch any of the others, who have no mentor senses?”
Jade asked Chime, “Is that possible?”
Chime’s expression was deeply conflicted. “Flower sensed the Fell were watching the old Indigo Cloud colony long before we found any evidence of it, and they weren’t even focusing on her. I’d think… I’d think a half-Fell mentor would have to know that their attention was on her, that they were trying to touch her mind.” He shrugged helplessly. “But I can’t say for certain. It’s not as if there are precedents for this.”
Auburn was looking at him oddly. “I agree. But how do you… ?”
“I used to be a mentor,” Chime said irritably. “I changed, because our court was under pressure and didn’t have enough warriors.” He hesitated. “That… It’s never happened to anyone here, after so many warriors were killed in the eastern colony?”
Auburn was thoughtful now. “No. But I recall something in the histories about such things happening in the past.”
Moon asked Lithe, “Are we related?”
That caught Lithe by surprise. She stared for a moment, then dropped her gaze. She fiddled with the beads on one of her bracelets. “I don’t know. I never saw… I was still a baby, when Malachite rescued us. The earliest thing I remember is the nurseries here.”
Malachite would know, Moon thought. Lithe might have been the daughter of one of the captured Arbora, but everyone had told him that consorts were more likely to father Arbora mentors.
Stone’s expression didn’t give any hint as to whether he believed Lithe or not. “So why are you talking to us?”
Lithe gestured in appeal. “I need help to prove that I and the rest of the crossbreeds have nothing to do with the Fell.” She faced Jade again. “And you want to take Moon as your consort, and Malachite won’t talk about that until after she destroys this Fell flight. So I want to set a trap. The Fell want crossbreeds. Let’s make them think they can get one. Use me as bait. Then we can catch a ruler and make it tell us how it knew about the court.”
Jade tilted her head. “‘We’ can catch a ruler?”
“Well, you and the line-grandfather, and the other queens,” Lithe admitted. “But I know Moon wants to talk to the Aventeran groundlings again. If you go there and take me with you, perhaps the Fell who are watching the city will come after me. We could camp for the night, in a vulnerable spot—”
“And the Fell won’t find that suspicious,” Stone commented blandly.
Lithe glared at Stone in frustration, but Moon said, “They would be suspicious, but that wouldn’t stop them from attacking us. They’d send some dakti or even a lesser ruler to spring the trap just to see what we wanted.” From Stone’s description it was a huge flight, and there were bound to be more rulers like Ivades, young and stupid enough to let the others send them on dangerous tasks.
“We had a ruler at Aventera,” Stone pointed out, “and we didn’t have much luck getting the truth out of him.”
“You smashed him too hard,” Moon reminded him. “And that was before we knew he had anything to tell us except that the Fell were here to eat the city.”
“Yes,” Lithe said with spirit. “If you don’t kill our captives, we might get more information.”
Jade regarded Stone. “You just don’t want us to do this.”