Archive of Our Own

Moon eyed the calm, murky surface of the water, trying to decide why he felt like something was going to eat him.

There were surprisingly few springs this stretch of uninhabited forest, despite being such a lushly green area, so he'd flown down as soon as he'd spotted this one: a body of water somewhere between a small lake and a large pond, and almost perfectly round. The edges were thickly lined with water lilies of a shade so virulently purple that Moon suspected that it was a color most groundlings couldn't fully see.

Something about this place – the opaque water, the way the purple lilypads clustered against the shore, the suspiciously lovely way the clouds and sky reflected off the dark surface – was making his spines want to stiffen. He tasted the air: nothing smelled wrong, even in his shifted form, no predator reek or stench of death or sickness in the water, but something was off. He didn't have any reason to feel this way.

But, then again, reason had never stopped him from feeling things before, even when he wished it would. His instincts, on the other hand, had gotten him out of a lot of places alive – they'd most recently saved him from an angry mob at Carthas Forge, when he'd smelled a heavy cloud of the oil that the locals used to polish their blades on the way back to his rented room – so he should probably trust them.

Feeling a little ridiculous, Moon flew along the edge of the lake until he found a stream that trickled into it. The water was crisp and cold, springfed, and there was a flat sunbaked rock farther upstream that he could stretch out on after drinking and filling his canteen. He dozed lightly – twitching alert at the cry of distant birds, a passing cloud's shadow, the crack of twigs in the forest – before slipping into a deeper sleep.

He jerked awake, thinking he was back in Saraseil for a long heartbeat before the plume trees and the faint perfume of the water lilies reminded him where he'd fallen asleep. After a confused moment, sunlight fell on the rock again, sharply replacing deep shadow, and Moon realized why he'd woken in the first place.

He looked up to check if clouds were gathering for another storm like the one a few days ago – and stopped, and stared.

There was a boat in the sky.

Moon scrubbed a hand over his face, but his vision didn't magically clear: there really was a sailing ship hanging in the air above the lake, with a elegant wooden hull and masts just like the ones that traded in the sea along the Crescent Coast. The boat had fan-like sails that were dyed red and purple, and sunlight gleamed off the smooth, well-tended sides of the hull.

Tasting the air, Moon realized why he'd thought of Saraseil in his confused awakening: he smelled groundlings mixed with salt and a warm scent like the sun, with a breath of the sweet nut oil that he remembered being popular with sailors. He'd never smelled it so far from the sea before.

The flying boat tilted and slowed above the far shore of the lake, coming to a full stop above the grassy flat bank there. Moon scooped up his pack, shifted with it, and sidled under the cover of the trees – not fully trusting that his darker scales would blend into the shadows there but also not wanting to stop watching the beautiful ship. He could see the groundlings who crewed it now, their golden skin and white hair catching the light as they bustled around the upper deck: folding the fan-sails down against the masts, tossing weighted lines over the side, and unfurling a long rope ladder until it touched the ground.

Moon watched the groundlings clamber down the ladder, laden with small casks and bags, and his throat ached with the urge to call out to them. He'd been travelling alone for almost half a season, ever since he'd had to leave Carthas, and seeing other people drove his loneliness into sudden painful awareness. Every time he tried to live in the wild, Moon eventually gave in to that loneliness, once he hit the point of feeling that being alone was the worst thing in the Three Worlds. Then every time he went back, he'd have to leave whatever settlement he'd found – because they tried to kill him, or cast him out, or because he could only trick himself for so long into forgetting that he was always alone, even in the middle of a crowd.

One of the yellow groundlings, probably female by the shape of her body, elbowed and jostled a male by the water's edge as they filled casks and sent them back up to the boat on rope lines – her brother, he thought. At this distance, Moon was just guessing – or maybe just wanting.

He hissed under his breath, sick of himself, and pushed away from the tree. There wasn't any point in staying here. Moon turned and leapt into the lowest branches of the tree. He would need to climb away for a distance before flying, so he didn't attract the boat's notice.

Someone screamed and Moon jerked back around. One of the sailors in the shallows was shouting for help in Altanic as he whacked at something with his bucket. A tentacle, grey and spotted with the same virulent purple as the lilies, snaked up around his chest, and his high pitched scream cut off sharply as he was yanked under the water. Half of the groundlings raced to the shore to try and help him – too late – while the smarter half ran for the boat.

A dozen more tentacle arms rose dripping from the lake, and Moon shot into the air.

From aloft, he saw the creature writhing under the surface, the dark water no longer hiding its movements as its tendrils fanned out from the deep center of the lake like a branch spider in its web. Like a web, this lake had been made, and Moon suddenly realized why he'd been unsettled before: there were no frogs, no fish, no waterlings at all except the predator in the deep. Birds sang in the trees, but none hunted along the shallows or flew overhead.

Moon suddenly wished he'd realized that – and thought about whether the tentacles could reach up as well as out – before taking flight.

Some of the groundlings were fighting off the tentacles with knives – one with a bucket – but the girl that Moon watched earlier had fallen and was being dragged towards the water's edge. She was struggling but only weakly, like she'd hit her head in the fall. Her brother shouted and grabbed her arms just as her feet were pulled into the water, and Moon stooped into a dive as another tentacle swung at the boy's head from behind.

Moon batted the arm out of the air and used his momentum to pin it to the ground, but the tip struck a glancing blow to the boy's back. He stumbled and dropped his sister and Moon had to dive for her arms before she was dragged under.

“Get back to the ship!” Moon snarled. When the boy only boggled at him, Moon braced himself, freed one hand, and shoved the boy back two bodylengths, just as a tentacle whipped through the space where he had been standing. The edge struck Moon's hand and he hissed as the flexible needle-like spines covering the tip slid between his scales to the soft flesh underneath. That was...not good. Almost nothing was sharp enough to puncture his scales; he'd never fought anything that could slip underneath before.

Calculating quickly, Moon batted another tendril away and pulled the girl up until he could wrap an arm around her chest. He twisted and slashed at the tentacle wrapped around her legs until it severed, then launched into the air with the end still trailing ichor.

He only made it a few wingbeats before he was nearly jolted out of the air by something wet and heavy smacking into his leg. Moon flapped harder but couldn't slip free with the tiny spines lodged under his scales. The prickling sting turned sharply into a jabbing pain and Moon looked down to see that the tentacle had squeezed itself into a thin rope as it tightened, causing its spines to stand out to twice their original length, stabbing deeply into his leg. Snarling, Moon struck out with his free foot until the disembowling claw caught and tore through the tentacle. He shot upwards, skimming along the hull of the flying boat, and landed with a clumsy thump on the upper deck.

The groundling girl had passed out at some point and Moon gently lowered her down. He resisted the urge to flop down on the deck himself, and pried the severed lake monster tentacle off her leg. Then he gritted his teeth and peeled away the one wrapped around his own leg – once removed, the stabbing pain shifted into a burning pain that was even worse, so that was great – and tossed them both over the railing.

“Oh gods, it's a Fell!” a voice cried, high with fear, and Moon's head snapped around so fast it made him dizzy. A cluster of the gold-skinned groundlings were huddled against the far rail. Moon rose slowly to his feet and backed away, hoping if he didn't make any threatening moves, he might make it over the railing before one of them pulled out a weapon. He stumbled on the smooth decking, fighting a fresh wave of dizziness – and realized that his leg was no longer burning but completely numb.

Moon turned and lunged for the railing, but the numbness surged up to his hip to the small of his back and his knees gave out, sending him flat on his face. Panting as panic set in, Moon dug his claws into the deck and tried to pull himself to the rail with his arms – he could still escape, he could glide down to the forest and hide – until the numbness washed up over his wings and he couldn't stop his body from shifting to groundling form.

Terror sent his mind tumbling even as his body went utterly limp. His eyes had fallen shut, so he couldn't see the groundlings coming for him, only hear the thump of their footsteps and their exclamations of horror. He couldn't get enough air, and the last thing he thought as the world faded away from him was that apparently he really was too stupid to live.

He woke up, which was the first surprise.

Second surprise: he wasn't tied up. He pushed himself up from the soft pallet he was lying on – a third surprise – and almost collapsed back down as the pounding headache he'd been ignoring flared into a dizzying thunderous pain, reminiscent of the time he'd been trampled by a grasseater when he was learning to hunt and cracked his skull. He ran a shaky hand over his head, but there was no blood, no dent, no swelling, just the throbbing pain.

He felt nauseated, too, but it was hard to tell what part of that was just the pain. Dimly, he remembered the numbing spikes on the tentacle predator – he had been poisoned, paralyzed, surrounded by a bunch of groundlings that thought he was a Fell.

But then he'd woken up.

Wincing, he rolled onto his knees beside the pallet and looked around the room with blurry eyes. No windows, one door, very narrow, with some sacks and debris in the corner that looked like this room was a storage space that had been hastily cleared out. His pack was against the wall by the door, bizarrely untouched – it had come through the shifts with him, but why had they left it here? Were his new knives still there?

The wood of the walls and floors was light and lacquered, like the flying boat; it was very hard and tough when he scratched at it experimentally. The floor swayed gently under his hands and knees, and he was pretty sure that was actually happening and not just from the dizziness.

So he was still on the flying boat. Alive. Also, confused.

Experimentally, he tried to get his feet underneath him to stand up, but he wobbled and fell back down with a loud thump. He cursed as footsteps came down the hallway outside the room. Now they knew he was awake. Idiot.

He thought about shifting, but he was so off balance that adding wings and a tail into the mix seemed like a really bad idea, and also people tended to scream “Fell!” at him and try to commit murder when he was in his winged form. He probably shouldn't push his luck at the whole not-getting-killed-yet thing that was happening here, so he stayed in groundling form and wobbled back into a non-threatening seated position on the pallet. He did reach out and drag his pack next to him: he could feel the long hard shape of a knife in the side pocket, and it made him feel better even though he could shift and injure someone far worse with his claws in a heartbeat.

Someone knocked politely on the door – knocked! He had lost track of how many surprises that made – and a high young voice called out, “Hello, are you awake?”

“Yes?” he called back, then flinched as the sound rattled around in his skull and made his headache flare again.

“Can I bring you some water?”

“Um. Yes?” Moon said, more careful with his volume this time but no less confused.

The door cracked open and a young woman peeked inside. Up close (and not busy fighting a tentacle monster), Moon could see that her species had honey-gold eyes to match their skin and pure white hair, fine and flyaway like floss. The room was so small that she just stretched out a hand and passed him a gourd of water. He drained it, swaying a little at the dizziness that came with tilting his head up, and handed it back to her.

“Do you have a headache?” she said sympathetically. “All the others got headaches from the venom. Grandfather said it's because you stopped breathing for a couple of minutes. You started breathing again on your own before too long but we had to use a bellows to breathe for Diar because she got a lot more of the poison before you grabbed her. Everyone else we got back just got hit by the spines but she almost got dragged in! Oh, I'm sorry, I'm being too loud. Would you like some painkillers? I'll have to get Grandfather for that.”

Moon blinked dizzily at her. “Yes?” he said again. His brain felt very creaky, but he was pretty sure she wasn't going to poison him. Or Grandfather wasn't. Probably. She seemed very young to be even hypothetically poisoning people.

The girl grinned at him and darted back down the hallway. She left the door pulled to – not locked, not even latched.

Moon gave himself a minute to let his head hang down and just breathe, some of the tension bleeding out of him. This was good. He probably wasn't going to be killed. He'd feel a lot better if he could figure out why that wasn't happening, but hopefully Grandfather would have more information when he got here.

Grandfather was apparently quick on his feet, because two sets of footsteps came back down the hall within minutes. The girl knocked again – on the still-open door – and opened it to let in a older man of the same race but more weathered, carrying a container of water and a little bottle of medicine, potent and bitter enough he could smell it at a distance.

“Hello, young man,” Grandfather said. “My name is Delin-Evran-lindel. Here's some medicine for that headache of yours, and I have some more water as well.”

Moon was too sick and off-balance to hide his hesitation when Delin offered the medicine, but the man just smiled kindly when he noticed. He drew his hand back, uncorked the bottle and drank a tiny sip. “It's quite safe,” he said. “We're traders and explorers, and we haven't encountered any groundlings that have poor reactions to this compound – though it's less effective on people with sealing heritage. But that's not a problem for you, of course.”

Moon was also pretty sure he didn't have any sealing heritage, between the wings and living in the forest when his family was still alive, and he was just about ready to knock himself unconscious if it would stop his head from hurting, so he took the bottle and drank. The healing tincture was strong: a cooling wave swept up his spine and down his limbs, and he felt his shoulders drop as he stopped unconsciously bracing against the pain.

“Thanks,” he rasped. In the absence of the pain, he also remembered some of his manners. “My name is Moon.”

“It is a very great pleasure to meet you, Moon,” Delin said, taking the empty bottle back. “And I must thank you for saving my granddaughter Diar's life earlier. We lost three people to that monster in the lake: two were dragged under, and one succumbed to the paralyzing toxin; I am grateful to you that our grief was not worse.” He tilted his head curiously. “Were you travelling alone?”

“Yes,” Moon said warily.

“How interesting!” Moon tucked his feet closer and out of the way as Delin plopped down into a cross-legged seat on the ground and flipped open a wooden case on his belt. He pulled out some loose paper and an ivory-handled charcoal writing tool, scribbling some words down in an unfamiliar script. “All of the Raksura that our scholars have met in the past travelled in groups, except the older consort who comes to the Golden Isles to trade sometimes. Is your colony nearby, then? May we take you home?”

Colony? Raksura? His heart twisted with hope, plus a faint bitterness that this man seemed to know more about his people than he did. “Uh, I'm not sure,” he said finally. “I don't think I have one? My family died a long time ago, when I was young. I didn't even know...did you say Raksura? Is that what we're called?”

The man looked completely taken aback. “Why, yes. Oh my, you must have been very young indeed. I've studied our records about your people, they're a very interesting race – I've always been rather envious of your wings, myself. We fly in our ships, but it's not the same. Although not all Raksura have wings – they have a complex society, with several different genders and body types in addition to your shapeshifting abilities.”

“Yes,” Moon said before he could stop himself. Something about Delin was very disarming. Maybe it had just been too long since someone had talked to Moon without him worrying that they were going to figure out his secret and try to kill him. “My siblings didn't have wings, but my mother did.”

“Ah. I believe you're a male warrior, then, or possibly a consort. Kilen-vanyi-atar was somewhat imprecise about the difference between the two, though I will certainly check his reference drawings when I return home to my library.” He looked so heartily annoyed at this – the way only someone who was truly passionate about an obscure topic could get – that Moon couldn't help but believe him.

“I've been searching for my people,” he said – which wasn't entirely true, not since Saraseil. But it was true that he'd never stopped hoping, somewhere deep down where he'd buried the idea. “The only shapeshifters with wings anywhere in the east are the Fell.”

“Yes,” the old man said, his golden eyes sharp and perceptive under the soft, kind lines of his face. “I imagine that made things quite difficult for you.”

Moon shifted his shoulders, not quite a shrug. That was an understatement.

“Have you been living out here in the wilderness that whole time?”

“No, I mostly live in groundling settlements,” said Moon. “When I can.”

Slowly, Delin said, “If you have no other obligations, perhaps you would like to return to the Golden Isles with us? After what happened, I would certainly feel better having a capable protector on board for the rest of the journey, and I would be happy to tell you all that I know about your people. With our cargo so full, space will be a bit cramped, and we're down to salted fish and grains after the storm and the lake so the food won't be much –”

“I can go hunting,” Moon said eagerly. “And I don't mind sleeping outside, if there's no room.”

Delin smiled gently. “That's very kind of you, Moon. Indulge an old man and rest another day first, won't you? Would you like to walk around and see the ship?”

Moon nodded. Most of his dizziness had faded with the headache, though he still felt a little unsteady as he stood and followed Delin out. The older man was happy to hold up the conversation all by himself, regaling him with the building and history of the Valendera. They peeked into the two cargo holds, filled with an assortment of luxury goods from further east on the Abascene peninsula, strolled along the deck, and stopped in to be served lunch by the ship's kitchen. Moon thought he disappointed several of the sailors by not shifting and eating something raw, but the fish-and-vegetable stew with flatbread was wonderful and welcome after weeks of eating game, so he was happy to disappoint his audience.

The constant weight of curious eyes finally got to be too much after the meal, when Delin got distracted talking to the ship's captain and took away the warm bubble of genial rambling that had kept Moon from getting uncomfortable thus far. The whole crew knew what he was – some of them had seen him flying, seen him shift – and it made something twitch and scrabble in his stomach: turns of habit coming up hard against the sea of friendly faces who all knew far too much.

He shrugged his shoulders, trying to sooth the itch of spines that didn't exist in his groundling form but wanted to raise defensively, and casually sidled out of the room and up to the deck, where at least he could fling himself over the railing if someone tried to do anything threatening, like start a conversation with him.

Moon ended up dangling halfway over the railing anyway, trying to figure out how the pulley system worked. He was tempted to shift and crawl down the hull to investigate more closely, but he still felt too self-conscious with all the strangers watching him – even though out here, most of them were working and not watching. But they were still there.

As a compromise with himself, he climbed up one of the tall masts to a lookout post (currently unoccupied), sat on the top of the box, and shifted. He felt better right away – maybe there was still poison lingering in his blood, and it was less effective in his winged form. Pulling his knees up to his chest, he stretched his wings out a little to feel the wind play over them, and let the sun bake away the last of his dizziness.

After a time, he realized he was getting dangerously close to falling asleep, so he folded his wings back and peered down at the deck. Delin had reappeared, but was contentedly scribbling away at his papers on a wooden tablet, so that was all right – Moon was sure that he would have shouted up to Moon if he'd wanted his attention, or possibly just climbed up the ladder despite his age and scholarly tendencies. He didn't seem big on formality.

Moon felt oddly daring as he spread his wings and dove off the lookout post, twisting his way past the fan-sails and looping once around the bottom of the boat before landing on the deck near Delin, who smiled at him with apparent delight. Moon shifted back to groundling and crouched next to him, peering at his paper.

Obligingly, Delin tilted the tablet so Moon could see: an incredibly realistic charcoal sketch of Moon perched on the lookout post. Moon had never been able to draw anything, though he could write in Altanic and Kedaic just fine; still, he thought the sketch was awfully good to have been done in such a short amount of time. From this angle, though, Moon could tell he was too skinny. He wasn't sure if it was the lack of regular food from living rough, or the last of the gangliness he'd struggled with while he was still growing. He'd stopped having to get new clothing a few turns back, at least, but he hadn't filled in as much as he'd hoped since. Judging by that versus other races he'd encountered – he was about thirty turns old when he'd stopped growing, probably – he suspected that meant his people were more long-lived than most.

He realized, suddenly, that now he had someone who he could ask about that, and the hundred other questions that had been bottled up in him for turns. His secret was out, but they wanted him to stay anyway, and they knew who he was, and maybe where he came from. He tucked his chin down and wrapped his arms around his legs, overwhelmed and uncertain. It all sounded too good to be true. Was he sure this was real?

“I'm going to title it 'Moon, a friend',” Delin proclaimed, signing the sketch and tucking away his charcoal. He dusted off his hands dramatically, his face creasing up along well-worn laugh lines as he grinned up at Moon.

“Alright,” Moon said, and smiled helplessly into his knees.

EIGHT TURNS LATER

Jade banked and followed Stone as they approached the cluster of flying islands that formed the Golden Isles. They crossed the last of the fields of floating moss and trees – at least, Jade thought they were fields, though they were nothing at all like how the Arbora grew crops – and the little yellow groundlings tipped up their straw hats to watch as they flew past. None of them seemed too alarmed by Stone, despite his size – he had visited here before, of course – so that was a good start for making a friendly trade.

She took a deep breath and settled her spines. This trip was her first time making a trade agreement as queen on her own, but Stone was here to help her, and the mentors' augury had said this was their best chance. The mentors had been startled when their reading pointed away from any known colonies, toward the Yellow Sea, since the Arbora had been stuck on the idea of finding a consort for Jade before taking any steps to move the colony. Then Stone had looked at the map and told them about the flying boats of the Golden Islanders.

He'd been annoyingly smug about it, too, since he'd said for turns that they should return to the Reaches. Pearl had been...Pearl about it: cynical and resigned and bitterly doubtful, about the venture and about Jade herself. Jade pushed aside the tangle of frustration and grief and anger that thoughts of her mother always clawed up, and angled her wings to swoop down and land on the lowest platform below the flying islands.

On the cargo barges floating near the dock, the Golden Islanders were crowding up to the rails and whispering excitedly at the sight of the Raksura. Stone shifted about ten paces above the platform since he was too big to fit in his winged form, falling the rest of the way to land in a crouch, and the dramatic show drew gasps of shock and delight from the workers. Jade hid a smile, and waited until the (armed but not hostile) welcoming party was close before she flicked a spine to signal the warriors to shift in unison. More cries of astonishment followed. Stone looked bored, but Jade thought it was cute that they were so excited over something that was so normal to her.

The welcoming party advanced, and their leader stepped out in front. She was unarmed except for a belt knife, though her followers carried reed staves and armor. They weren't remotely a threat to a group of Raksura, but Jade was careful to remember her lessons on groundling body language and kept herself open and unthreatening.

“I greet you on behalf of the Golden Isles,” the leader said in Altanic. She darted her eyes between Stone, who she clearly recognized, and Jade, who was clearly leading the group.

Jade mimicked the spread-hands gesture that the leader had made with her greeting, and replied, “I am Jade, of the Indigo Cloud Court. We were guided here by my line-grandfather, Stone, so that we might treat with you and discuss a trade.”

The woman relaxed once the hierarchy was established. “Ah! I'm Endell-liani, overseer of cargo and trade. Will you come with me to talk with our Gerent? He is the elected leader of our trade guilds and speaker for our people. I am sure he will be pleased to meet your...line-grandfather again, as well.”

“We would be honored,” Jade said, bowing her head. She signaled the others to follow, and trailed Endell-liani to the broad stairs that wound up the side of the flying island.

She kept her face calm and friendly as they climbed, for all the curious Islanders that watched them, but her neck started to itch as she noticed that Root had been quiet for far too long. Unfortunately, they'd been a day into the trip before she'd realized he was in that phase that male warriors went through where they were obnoxiously aggressive and awkward, or she'd have left him back at the colony. She turned to look at him a few times, and sure enough, eventually he burst out, “Why do we have to walk? Why can't we fly?” Thankfully, he spoke in Raksuran, not Altanic.

Stone growled at him, letting the deep resonance of his shifted form bleed through, and Root shut up fast. Jade resisted the urge to roll her eyes and kept climbing.

They reached a market plaza on the first island above the water, and she kept an eye on her warriors as they naturally fanned out in the open space. Balm and Song were fine, but Spark was prone to getting distracted by trade goods, since one of his clutchmates was a teacher and a talented artisan among the Arbora, and if Sparkwandered off then Root would see it as permission for him to wander off, and then Root would get into trouble, inevitably. Stone, of course, had already broken away from the group because he didn't care about setting an example, and was strolling over to the scenic outlook of the floating fields.

Jade turned to Endell-liani and started to ask about the market, when Stone said, “What's that?”

Jade frowned at the tone of his voice and the way his back had gone tense, and walked fast to join him at the plaza's edge. Endell-liani trailed after, and squinted as Stone pointed out across the sea. “There, just beyond the farthest field, that movement in the water.”

Endell-liani shook her head. “I'm sorry, I can't see that far very clearly. Perhaps it was a cloud shadow?”

Jade frowned harder. Her senses weren't as strong as Stone's, but she could see it now, snaking around the edges of the moss flats. “Is that a sea serpent?”

Endell-liani made a skeptical sound. “Oh no, it's far too shallow here for serpents, and they're fairly rare in the Yellow Sea to begin with, even in the deeper areas. That's one of the advantages of the port–”

The shadow of the serpent twisted as it passed a cluster of farming rafts, and Endell-liani cut off with a horrified gasp as its tail flicked out of the water and casually shattered the boats, little yellow bodies of the Islanders crushed or flung sickeningly in its wake. The shadow sped up, moving with frightening speed towards the docks.

Stone stiffened, then stepped up on the parapet and threw himself into the air, shifting as he fell.

“It must be ill, or, or disturbed,” Endell-liani was saying in dazed horror. “Serpents never come this shallow, we can't....” She shook herself. “Harbormen, assemble!” she cried, running towards the stairs.

Jade bit her lip, then signaled to Balm, Spark, Root, and Song to follow as she shifted and leapt into the air.

She had to bank almost immediately as the serpent reared into the air in front of them, so close she could feel the sea spray flung from its scales. Angling her wings, she twisted to check that the others had made the turn – then watched in horror as the serpent slid itself onto the deck of a low-flying ship, wrapped its body over and around the center of the hull, and tightened its coils. The serpent was built like the freshwater eels they sometimes ate: an angular head with a wide jaw and small eyes, a pair of fins just behind its head, and a long, thick, muscular body. The wood creaked and then snapped under its pressure, loud reports like bones cracking in chorus with the screams of the helpless crew.

Jade dove for them, snatching a sailor off the top of one of the fan-sail masts just as the ship snapped in half. She felt a wash of air against her frills, and spun away by instinct just as the back half of the ship shot upwards, a dangling rope whipping her scales as it rocketed past and collided with another ship in the air above. The rest of the ship and the serpent crashed down on top of the platform docks, and the whole structure broke and collapsed into the water. Jade clutched at the sailor, who was sobbing in horror in her arms, and beat her wings mechanically to get clear as groundlings cried out and died all around her.

The serpent shrieked – in rage or triumph or pain, Jade couldn't tell – and writhed on top of the wreckage just as Stone, diving in with the sun behind him, struck just behind its head with his claws fully extended. The monster was as thick around as Stone's torso and four times his length; in Jade's head, she heard her mother's late clutchmate Mica, who taught her to hunt, saying Never hunt anything more than twice your size, even with backup, and felt her spines ripple in fear.

She'd lost track of the others when the ship broke, but now she saw them diving in to help Stone by harrying the serpent, swooping to strike at its delicate, exposed facial structures, distracting it as Stone tore great gashes in its neck. Cursing herself, Jade dropped the groundling unceremoniously at the plaza – half of the lower stairs leading to the docks had torn away – and looped back to help just as Root, the young fool, got his claws caught in the corrugated scales above the serpent's gills.

Shrieking, the serpent started to roll onto its side to crush Root, and only Stone's speed saved him as he let go of the serpent, snatched Root up, and shot away. The serpent turned lightning fast and snapped at Stone, its teeth ripping down his leg even as he slapped it in the face with his tail. It wriggled clear of the dock wreckage, slid back under the water, and immediately swam towards another barge.

Stone threw Root back into the air and turned to stoop once again at the serpent, but his angle was wrong – it looked right to Jade, but he missed somehow – and the serpent contorted under the surface, whipping the boat to pieces from beneath with its muscular tail. Stone beat upward and tried again, missed again, and floundered in the water.

Jade suddenly remembered playing in the river as a fledgling, snatching at the little fishes and missing: the way the surface of the water broke and twisted the sight of her prey so that she couldn't just grab them straight-on. She'd learned eventually, though, and she still remembered the trick of it.

Jade arrowed for the serpent as it plunged after another cluster of fishing boats. She watched for the moment it doubled back on itself, readying its tail to strike, and dove into the water at the perfect angle. Her claws connected with the serpent's eye, and the orb burst like a melon, blood and chunks of flesh clouding the water. It shrilled and reared back so fast and hard that Jade was flung up and free of the water; she tumbled and beat her wings until she caught the air again, then dodged narrowly as the serpent lunged for her.

Out of the corner of her eye, as she flapped for more height to get away, a black figure shot into view and flashed agilely across the serpent's head, slashing at its good eye and darting out of range again before it could react. As the serpent bellowed in pain, she took a shocked, protracted moment to realize that he was too dark to be one of her warriors, far too small to be Stone.

The strange Raksura – the strange consort – had sliced a bloody gash across the serpent's eye, not bad enough to blind it like Jade had with the other side but plenty enough to put it at a disadvantage. The maddened serpent was ignoring the groundlings now, lunging at first Jade, and then the stranger when she rose out of reach. But the stranger was diving back down instead of flying clear, getting far too close and then spiraling out of reach again when it snapped its jaws.

He was beautiful in motion, but also completely insane.

“What are you doing?” she screamed, diving closer to be heard over the wind. “Get out of range!”

The stranger ignored her, shouting back, “Help me lure it into the fields!” He dove and twisted again, and she could see now that he was turning always towards the grey-green mass of the nearest floating field.

Jade cursed but followed his lead, darting in and away in turns with him, pressing as fast as she dared to keep the serpent baited. Right at the edge of the field, the stranger shot into a twisting, terrifying arc right past the serpent's jaws, and stayed just within range as it rose up into the air in pursuit, forcing it to stretch higher and higher – then pulling completely out of reach with a burst of speed at its highest point.

The serpent shrieked in outrage and flopped back into the water – but the stranger's flight had drawn it out over the field, and its entire forebody was enveloped in a cloud of moss as it splashed down. Thrashing only made its plight worse: the moss tangled around its fins and jaw and gills like spidersilk, and it bit and tore fruitlessly at the fine, slippery tangle.

Unfortunately, Jade couldn't see a damn thing about it clearly anymore, and it was flailing around too erratically to attack again. She hovered over the field and traded glances with the stranger, who also looked unsure what to try next.

Then a huge black mass shot between them and dove onto the serpent: Stone, eerily quiet as always in his shifted form, ripped huge bloody wounds into the serpent's head and neck, biting and tearing and wrenching until Jade heard a sharp crack, and the serpent shuddered into stillness, floating limply on the top of the moss flat. Stone flapped, trying gain height, but his claws were caught in the moss, too. He shifted, blurring and shrinking down until he stood on the serpent's bloodied head – but instead of freeing him, he wound up draped in moss from head to toe. With an air of casual exasperation, he shook a few strands of moss off his arm and put his hands on his hips, tilting his head up at Jade like this was somehow her fault.

She laughed, thrumming with tension and relief as she realized the fight was over. Looking around, she saw the strange consort had flown to an abandoned raft at the edge of the field, half covered in a wash of moss from the serpent's fall. He looked back; she couldn't quite read his spines, but his stance seemed half-hopeful, half nervous. She flew slowly to join him, and caught his scent in the wind for the first time: he was unattached. Her heart started to race – he was so beautiful: his lean conformation, his powerful flying and broad shoulders, his clever tactics – but what was he doing out here alone?

Landing on the raft, she shifted to her Arbora form. The consort's eyes widened a little – was that good? Bad? Was he scared of her? Did he find her impressive? – but he didn't shift like he was supposed to. This whole situation was so entirely outside of correct protocol, she didn't know what to do.

“Good flying,” she blurted out, and promptly wanted to die. “Um, I am Jade, daughter queen of the Indigo Cloud Court.”

The consort eyed her, unreadable for a long moment, then shifted. He had dark hair and stunning green eyes that almost glowed in the sunlight against his dark bronze skin. He was wearing a blue-black silk robe in the short style that the Islanders favored, which he had wrapped over leggings because he was so much taller and lankier than the Islanders that the robe was more like a tunic.

“I'm Moon,” he said.

She waited, but that was all he said. Jade cleared her throat. “May I know what court you're from?” Maybe he was from the Reaches, and thought Indigo Cloud wasn't good enough to introduce himself properly? He obviously came from a very good bloodline – but, no, someone from a court that snobbish wouldn't have attacked a sea serpent on his own.

“I don't have a court,” Moon said, tensing, and Jade got a sinking feeling. Was he...a solitary?

There was a splashing sound from behind her, in Stone's direction. Moon's eyes went wide and he lunged forward, crying, “Look out!” Jade stumbled when he pushed her aside, caught completely off-guard. She shifted and spun just in time to see a dark figure bowl Moon over backwards, still in his vulnerable groundling form.

It was a Fell ruler.

Jade's stomach turned over and she snarled as the disgusting Fell scent finally reached her, far too late. The ruler rose to his feet, his claws wrapped around Moon's bare, delicate throat: an obvious hostage. Glancing over her shoulder, Jade saw that Stone was still trapped in the moss tangle – and neither of them could rip off the ruler's head before he tore Moon's throat open.

“Who's this?” the ruler purred, tucking himself close behind Moon. “One of Stone's get? We though he was too feeble to breed now.” He bent to scent at the vulnerable line of Moon's throat, and Moon visibly shuddered, one hand coming up to grip the ruler's wrist, white-knuckled but too weak in his groundling form to pull it away.

Though she was shaken by the Fell recognizing Stone so casually – and where the fuck had he come from in the first place? – the need to protect Moon came first. “His queen will hunt your whole flight down if you harm a single hair on his head,” Jade hissed, trying to bluff.

“His queen!” the ruler laughed. He slid his claws down Moon's neck and scented again, actually pressing his mouth to Moon's skin this time. In helpless fury, Jade saw Moon's hand close into a fist in the cloth at his waist where his short robe had ridden up. “He has no queen. No court either. We knew him in Saraseil.”

Moon stiffened, shock freezing his face for a moment, followed by a flash of terror. Then anger wiped them both away, and he snarled, “The only Fell I know are dead.”

Too fast to track, his right hand whipped up and back, and there was suddenly a knife hilt-deep in the ruler's eye. The ruler shrieked in pain, and Moon twisted away, his thumb dug precisely into the hollow under the ruler's wrist to keep his claws from closing. Jade pounced, wrenched, and they were both showered in blood as she tore the ruler's head right off his neck.

“Are you alright?” she demanded, discarding the head with a wet thump. She resisted the urge to reach out to him, draw him close. He'd stabbed a ruler with an ordinary knife and survived: she couldn't decide if that meant he didn't need protection or if it meant he needed more. She kept getting stuck on how attractive it was.

Moon backed away from her, shaking his head. He looked sick – from the violence? He was a consort, after all – but, no, he'd just precisely stabbed a Fell in the eye, he wasn't likely to be squeamish in that way. “I have to go,” he said, shifting, and with a single bound he was in the air and flying away.

Jade lurched, starting to follow, then stopped herself. An unattached queen couldn't go flying after an unattached consort, even if he was a solitary. She could barely believe that last part, watching him fly away. He was stunning. He'd just saved her life.

Huge wings flapped behind her, and she felt the air shift as Stone freed himself at last, and then shift again as he dropped onto the raft next to her. “Who the fuck was that?” he demanded.

Jade sighed, and started to explain as best she could.

She spent a lot of time explaining, and hearing explanations, over the rest of the day and into the evening: telling Stone that the mysterious consort was a solitary, which he didn't take well; being told that the Fell ruler had been hiding under the skin of the sea serpent and controlling it somehow, only emerging after it died; explaining it all again to Endell-liani and the Gerent while Stone got to wander off and eat food; explaining why they had come to trade, and why the Islanders' flying ships would be perfectly safe, and why the Fell attack didn't have anything to with them.

Being told that her request was denied.

By the time she got back to the others, she was in no mood to explain things again, and she hissed at Root when he started pestering her for information. She regretted once again that she hadn't brought Chime instead of Root, so she could ask him about the eerie way that the ruler had recognized them and Moon. He was still such a poor flyer and had never been away from the court, so at the time they left that had outweighed the advantages of having a sensible, knowledgeable former-mentor-turned-warrior with them, but oh, she regretted it now. And Root was about to regret it even more, if he didn't leave her alone.

Balm, recognizing that she was riding the edge of her patience, pulled her away and fed her – and then started her own gentle interrogation.

Jade sighed and gave in, dragging her clutchmate back into the little square courtyard centered between their rooms. Night had fallen, but the clay of the court was still warm from the day's heat. Stone was back from wherever he'd wandered off during the meetings, and she glared at him. “You couldn't tell them what happened yourself?” she asked in exasperation.

“I did,” Stone said. So, he'd clearly explained things about as well as he always did. Behind him, Balm rippled her spines expressively, a study in politely restraining herself from murdering an elder. Jade felt a wash of fondness – what were sisters for, if not being united in wanting to strangle the people that you also wanted to strangle?

So Jade told the story one more time, ending with her failure to buy any flying boats.

“I don't understand,” Song said. “The augury was good! Why wouldn't they agree to let us use their boats?”

“They seem to think the Fell followed us out here,” Jade said, poking dejectedly at the cushions. “And I'm not sure that they didn't – I thought the sea serpent was focused on attacking me because I blinded it, but if it was being controlled by the ruler, then it was really the ruler that was trying to kill us. And Moon, I suppose. And how did the ruler know that we were from Indigo Cloud? How did he recognize Stone?”

“Fell can share memories along their bloodlines,” Stone said. “I've killed enough Fell in my life that it's possible they know me by now.” He looked grimly pleased at the idea.

“Then how did he recognize Moon? I asked the Gerent about that Saraseil place that the ruler mentioned – it was a coastal city on the peninsula that the Fell destroyed almost twenty turns ago, and Moon was too young to have been on his own then. Were there any colonies that far east, Stone?”

Stone shrugged. “A few. I thought they all failed and went back to the Reaches, though. The Fell are all liars, anyway.”

Jade bit her lip. She'd seen Moon's face when the ruler mentioned Saraseil. She suspected he really had been there when the Fell attacked, but she didn't like any of the options she could come up with for why, or how.

Balm cleared her throat. “None of this explains why the augury was so wrong. Is there something else we can try to get the boats?”

“We could steal them?” Root piped up. Jade hissed at him in chorus with Stone, and he shrank back behind Song, who looked exasperated.

“Maybe the augury was about finding a consort for Jade after all?” Spark said shyly. “I mean, are we really sure he's a feral solitary? He was so helpful! And pretty!”

“He's not feral,” Jade repeated tiredly. “I asked Endell-liani about him. Moon has been living here and working for one of the trading families for eight turns. I don't know what happened with his court, or why he's a solitary, but he's not eating groundlings or anything.”

Stone grunted and said, “Instead of just guessing why he got kicked out of his court, why don't you ask him yourself?”

Startled, Jade followed his gaze up to the reed roof above the courtyard. A fragment of shadow twitched, and then Moon stood up from his hiding place – downwind, and hidden behind the crest of the roof. He jumped down and landed neatly at the edge of their circle. The warriors nearest to him drew back a little, and Spark looked mortified.

Moon was so pretty, though. Jade could only sympathize with Spark. The warm lamplight caught the green of Moon's eyes and the bronze undersheen of his scales, and she was so used to the bright warrior colors that it was hard to look away from the shockingly rich black of his winged consort form.

He wasn't shifting to groundling, though, and Jade hid a frown. He'd done that before, too, on the raft. His spines and tail weren't showing any signs of aggression or offense, so why was he being rude?

“Eavesdropping isn't very polite,” Stone drawled, and Jade suppressed a sigh. Speaking of rude people.

“Neither is calling someone feral,” Moon shot back, bristling. His accent was strange, flattened out like a groundling language, like he hadn't spoken Raksuran in awhile.

“Most solitaries are feral. How do we know you're not?”

“Stone!” Jade snapped. "I don't expect you to be nice, but could you manage the bare minimum of politeness to a person who saved my life earlier?" She turned to Moon and said, "Thank you again, by the way. That ruler would have killed me if you hadn't pushed me out of the way. Are you alright?"

Moon nodded, his shoulders relaxing minutely. He looked around and belatedly shifted to groundling form, like he'd only just noticed that he was alone in that.

"Um, why were you listening to our conversation?" Jade asked carefully. She meant what she'd said – he'd saved her life and she was grateful – but she wasn't so blinded by his attractiveness not to notice that he was a little strange.

He hesitated and said, "You're trying to rent wind-ships from the trading guilds?"

"Yes," Jade said, and then, eliding a great deal, settled for saying, "Our colony is moving, and it would be easier with some kind of transportation."

Moon nodded. "Because of the...Arbora?" He sounded oddly hesitant, and the word came out sounding wrong, in that slightly Altanic accent. In her peripheral vision, she saw Stone cock his head curiously.

"Yes, and we have some supplies that are difficult to carry."

"The damn anvils," Balm muttered, and Jade hid a wince. The Arbora had mentioned those just a few times in the many arguments about moving the colony.

“Well, the Gerent isn't the only person who controls wind-ships. The trading guilds hold all the primary cargo vessels, but there are lot of families who own their own wind-ships for exploration and small-scale luxury trading.”

Jade realized where he was going with that line. “Like the family that you work for?”

A tiny smile pulled at the corner of Moon's mouth, and Jade was suddenly very distracted. His mouth looked so soft; she wanted to nip it. “Yes. The head of the family is a scholar who's studied Raksuran culture, so he's willing to discuss an arrangement. But we don't want to anger the Gerent by defying his authority publicly, so I flew here pass along his invitation to meet privately.”

Jade noted that he'd used 'we', including himself in the groundling trading family. It was strange to hear, from a Raksuran.

“And why should we trust you?” Stone growled.

“I'm not asking you to trust me, I'm asking you to come to a trade negotiation. Do you trust every trader who comes to your town? Colony,” he corrected himself. “If you're not interested, just say no. I don't care.” His eyes flickered to Jade for a moment, then away.

Unfortunately, Stone spotted the look too, and kept pressing. “You're a solitary. Solitaries are dangerous. Why were you driven out of your court?”

“I wasn't driven out, they all died!” Moon burst out. His face twisted with grief, and Jade's heart wrung itself sympathetically in her chest. “I don't even remember living in a court, we lived in a tree.”

“A mountain-tree?” Stone asked.

“A– what? No, just a regular tree,” said Moon. “Then the others died and I was on my own. I... didn't even know what I was until I met Delin.”

“How could you not know? Only babies don't know that,” Root scoffed. Balm smacked the back of his head, and he yelped in protest.

“You must have been young,” Jade said, more diplomatically.

Moon shifted his weight. “Seven turns, I think?”

Spark gasped, quickly muffled, and Jade felt sick. He had been practically a baby. It would explain a lot, though – the weird body language, the way he sounded, how a consort learned to fight and fly like he did, why he was living as a solitary but had clearly managed to find a new home and even a new family with these groundlings.

“Huh,” Stone said, some of his coiled tension dropping away. Jade could almost see him making the same connections that she had. “Was this east of here? Around the curve of the gulf of Abascene?”

“Further.”

Stone hummed. “There were a few courts that went that far east. It's possible,” he told Jade.

“And you were living with groundlings. That's why you were in Saraseil when the Fell attacked,” Jade said in realization.

Moon flinched, and Jade felt instantly guilty. She instantly tried to distract him by asking, “Ah, why didn't you try to find any Raksuran colonies once you knew more about us? Did your, um, Delin not know?”

“I did,” Moon said flatly. “Southwest of here, one of the colonies we had records of. They tried to kill me.”

“Oh.” Jade winced, and saw several of the others make similar faces. That was... terribly plausible, actually.

“You don't seem surprised. What's so bad about being a solitary, anyway?” Moon said. “Murder seems a little extreme.”

“We're not meant to live alone,” Jade said carefully. “Solitaries are usually Raksurans who committed crimes bad enough to be driven from their courts – violent, or feral, or unwilling to get along with anyone. Consorts are rare, prized above any other birth, so....” she trailed off.

“So it looked extra bad,” Moon finished. “Right.”

“But you're obviously not living alone,” Jade said, trying to be reassuring. “You're just...living with groundlings, for very good reasons!” Oh, she sounded like an idiot. Stone raised an ironic eyebrow at her, and she ignored him pointedly.

Luckily, Moon didn't laugh at her, just brushed his hand over his hair awkwardly. “Speaking of, we should probably get going if you wanted to meet with them.” He looked at Stone. “You're too big to fly over without someone spotting you, but one or two of the others should be fine.”

Jade said, “I can carry him in groundling form, actually.” She was pretty sure this wasn't a trap of any kind, but she knew Stone would never agree to stay behind. Also, he was the most experienced at talking to traders.

Moon made a face, then quickly controlled it. Jade couldn't blame him – Stone wasn't the most pleasant person to be around even when he wasn't being deliberately insulting and antagonistic, like he had been with Moon so far.

Jade suddenly realized – Moon had said he was just here to pass on the message, but – “Will you come with us? If they agree to the boats, I mean.” She felt herself flush, and was grateful that her Arbora scales didn't show it. “If you wanted to learn more about Raksura, and see the court, I mean.”

Moon looked startled, then – she thought – pleased. “I'll be on the wind-ship crew, if we agree to go. I always go on trips to new areas, these days. I'm a good fighter,” he said.

“I noticed,” Jade said.

He smiled at her, and she melted a little. “But yes. I'd like that,” he said, sounding shy for the first time.

Jade smiled back at him, and let herself start to hope.