Edge of Worlds (The Books of the Raksura) (34 page)

They had taken the boat around to the point on Rorra’s map where the current turned, and the islands were only distant smudges on the waterline. Stone had flown ahead to scout, and Jade and Balm had split off to skirt the islands. Moon and the others were to meet them here. There were so many questions that still needed answering, but at least they could find out where the Fell were nesting.

River, in his groundling form and sitting on the bench next to the rail, looked sour and bored and kept glaring at Moon like this was his fault. Moon had refused to stay out of the search, and Jade had refused to let him come with her or go with Stone, and going on the boat was the compromise they had reached. Chime and River were, in River’s words, “stuck guarding the stupid consort.” So far it had been an uneventful trip, with no sightings of Fell. Mostly Rorra and Magrim had guided the boat, listening and commenting occasionally while Kalam talked to Chime and Moon.

The Arbora, Delin, and the other warriors had been left back on the sunsailer, with orders to help the Kishan salvage the remains of the large flying boat. The small flying boat that had been tethered on the island for emergencies had been destroyed almost completely, leaving behind only a few chunks of moss from its railings and cabin walls.

Moon, sitting on the side railing, yawned. It was tempting to nap on the sun-warmed deck, but he was making himself stay awake. Last night, Jade had made sure all the warriors had a chance to sleep, but always left at least two on watch. Not that the Kishan weren’t watching too, but the Raksura were watching harder.

River sighed exaggeratedly and said, “So if they aren’t back by this afternoon, should we hunt?”

Moon said, “I’m the stupid consort, I can’t tell you to do anything.” River had spoken in Raksuran, but Moon answered in Altanic, not wanting to exclude the groundlings. Kalam snorted in amusement, Rorra lifted a brow, and Magrim, who was used to them by now, controlled a smile. River glared.

“That aside,” Chime said, leaning on the pole that supported the canopy over the steering mechanism. “There’s not a lot of food out here, just a few fish and lizards.”

“That’s probably why there aren’t any sealings around here,” Kalam said.

Chime nodded. “Right, but what are the Fell eating? There aren’t any groundlings.”

“They’re probably eating the dakti,” Moon said.

“Ugh,” Kalam said succinctly.

Moon felt the boat move, just a little push against the current. He stood and shifted. “Something’s in the water.”

River and Chime both flowed rapidly into their other forms. Rorra gripped the steering lever, Kalam turned to survey the water, and Magrim reached for the small fire weapon tucked under the bench.

Chime pointed suddenly. “Right there. Something under the surf—”

A dark shape broke the surface only a few paces from the rail. Water sprayed and the boat rocked. Moon caught the scent and flung out his arms. “Stop! It’s Stone!”

Magrim whistled in relief and lowered the fire weapon. “Can he give some warning next time?”

River sat down on the bench and pinched the bridge of his nose. Chime turned to Moon. “If I’d been in groundling form I would have pissed myself.”

“Some of us were in groundling form,” Rorra muttered sourly, taking the weapon from Magrim and stowing it back under the bench.

The water churned as Stone shifted out of his winged form, then he surfaced and caught hold of the rail. He looked up at Moon’s expression, then glanced around at the others. “Too close to the boat?”

“Too close,” Moon said, giving him a hand up.

“Sorry.” Stone heaved himself over the side and stood on the deck, dripping. “There’s a lot of sand in the current down here and it’s hard to see.”

“It’s fine,” Moon said. “Did you find anything?”

“They’re here, all right.” Stone jerked his chin toward the southeast. “Chime was right.”

“I was?” Chime looked gratified. “They’re using the gleaners?”

“They were. I found pieces of dead gleaners floating all through here.” Stone took a seat on the bench, his wet clothes forming a pool of saltwater. “As soon as I got close, I caught Fell stench, so I had a general direction. I went into the water to try to get a better idea of where they are, and their stench is in the current too. I followed it about as close as I could without them knowing I was there.”

Moon let his breath out. It was a relief that they were right. He gave Chime a nudge to the shoulder. “You saved us a lot of time searching.”

Chime’s spines flicked in pleasure. “Now we just need to figure out a way to get close and see how many there are.”

“That’s not going to be easy,” River said.

That was a vast understatement. Moon had no idea how they could do it out here on the open sea without being seen. But the Fell already knew they were here. He wasn’t sure how revealing that the Raksura knew where the flight was located would be giving away any vital information. He was about to say so, when Rorra said, “Can the Fell detect scent in the water, the way you can?”

“It’s not scent in the water,” Stone said. “It’s carried in the air just above the water. But Fell aren’t great scent-hunters, no.”

Rorra hesitated. “I could do it.”

Moon stared at her.
Right. Rorra’s a sealing
. He had almost forgotten. “You can still breathe underwater?” Delin had said that she had been altered to allow her to stay on land, and Moon had assumed it would make her unable to breathe water.

“I can’t go down to the depths anymore,” Rorra said, “and I’m slower than I used to be. But I could handle this.”

The faint wrinkles on Magrim’s brow deepened in worry. “Rorra . . . Are you sure?”

Kalam added, “You don’t have to. Just because you’re a sealing . . .” He hesitated, clearly not sure what to say. “Well, you don’t have to.”

She made a faint amused noise. “No. But I can get close enough to see them, without them seeing me.”

“Unless there’s a kethel in the water,” River pointed out.

Rorra didn’t appear concerned, though Moon was fairly sure she was. She said, “I came from a sea that has many large predators. I’m good at avoiding them.”

“You sure you want to do this?” Moon said. He didn’t want Rorra to die and he especially didn’t want to be the one to get her killed. He could imagine too many things that might go wrong.

She let out a gusty breath. “Someone will have to do it. It’s safer from the sea than the air.”

“There’s Jade and Balm,” River said suddenly, pointing.

Moon turned to look, and spotted two shapes flying toward them from the direction of the islands.

“Not Fell?” Magram said uneasily, shading his eyes to look.

Rorra and the Kishan probably couldn’t see anything yet. “Not Fell. I can see the color of their scales,” Moon told them.

Chime waved.

Jade and Balm approached rapidly. As they neared the boat, they banked and circled above it. First Balm, then Jade, dropped down to light on the railing, then stepped down onto the deck.

“Good news,” Jade told them as she furled her wings. “We found the Fell.”

“So did we,” Moon told her. He didn’t understand why Jade and Balm had changed their plan to search, or why they had gone so far to the south.

“In the sea, that way?” Stone pointed.

Jade frowned, and Balm looked baffled. “No,” Jade said, “on the second island, that way.” She pointed at a right angle to the direction Stone was pointing.

Chime turned to Rorra. “Could the current do that? Make it seem like the Fell were in the open water when they were actually on an island?”

Moon remembered the map, the way Rorra had drawn the current’s path with her hand, and he didn’t think so. Rorra confirmed it, saying, “No, not this current, not from the second island.”

“Then there’s two of them,” River said, turning to Jade. “Two flights.”

Moon let out his breath. He hated to say it, but River was right.

Stone rubbed his face. “Of course there are.”

Jade hissed in exasperation. “That’s all we need.”

Moon asked Jade, “Did you get close enough to see them?”

“Yes. They probably spotted us, but they didn’t try to come after us. They were dug in under an old ruin and we only saw two kethel.”

“Did the ruin look like it might have been part of the city, made by the same people?” Kalam asked.

Balm glanced at Jade, and spread her hands. “It was a structure made out of coral, looked fairly old.”

“How many were in the flight you saw?” Jade asked.

“We didn’t see them yet.” Moon looked at Rorra, wondering if she was still willing to carry out their plan. “Stone picked up their stench in the current.”

“I’m going to go take a look now.” Rorra sat down on the bench and started to unlace her boots. “And yes, I’m sure.”

Moon saw Jade’s confusion, then her expression cleared as she remembered what Rorra was. She said, “If we get you killed, Callumkal isn’t going to like it.”

Rorra glanced up, her smile thin. “Callumkal knows me too well.” She pulled her first boot off, and Moon saw her fins for the first time, folded and pinched together to make a rough foot-shape to fill the boot. They were dark with bruises and scar-tissue. It looked so painful it made Moon’s spines twitch in distress.

Kalam said, “Rorra’s careful. She won’t get hurt.” It sounded like a combination of loyal support and fervent hope to Moon.

Moon was trying to think of all the possibilities. Rorra’s scent wouldn’t matter in the water. The Fell wouldn’t be able to detect it there like a sealing would. “How fast can you swim?”

Rorra pulled off her other boot. On that leg the fins were missing, the limb ending in a rounded stump of scar tissue. “Not as fast as you can fly, so don’t expect me back immediately.”

Moon turned to Jade. “We need to get her closer to where Stone scented the Fell. Otherwise she’ll have to search for them and it will give them more time to find her first.”

Rorra stripped off her shirt and started to unbuckle her pants. The skin of her torso had only faintly visible scale patterns, but there were wide gill slits on either side of her chest. Magrim and Kalam both looked away. The Kishan, at least the Kish-Jandera, appeared to have a mild nudity taboo. That was probably another reason they had so much trouble getting used to Raksura.

Jade glanced at Stone. “Can you take her?”

“Sure.” Stone saw Rorra’s dubious expression, and said, “I won’t drop you from too high.”

“Lovely.” Rorra grimaced. She glanced around, saw Kalam and Magrim were still studiously looking away, and held out a hand to Moon. “I need help standing.”

He shifted to his groundling form to keep from accidentally poking her, stepped in and put an arm around her to help her stand. She looked at Stone. “How do we do this?”

Stone eyed her appraisingly, then smiled just a little. “Jump in, but stay on the surface. I’ll scoop you up.”

“What a comforting thought,” Rorra said, and jerked her head toward the rail.

Moon helped her limp over to it. Balm stepped up to take her hand and steady her from the other side. Rorra breathed, “Thank you.” Then she leaned forward and flipped over the rail and into the water.

Her body slipped through the low waves, fast and sleek, even with the missing fins. Stone waited until she was about fifty paces away, then he stepped up onto the rail and dove off the boat. He shifted before he hit the water and slid smoothly under the surface.

Confused, Kalam said, “I thought he was going to fly.”

Watching with narrowed eyes, Jade said, “He’s building up speed.”

Moon could see it too, the rapidly moving line of ripples just below the surface, angling away from the boat and Rorra. Then the ripples disappeared. Chime said, “I think he’s going to—”

The big dark body broke the surface with a powerful flap of wings and launched itself upward. Kalam and Magrim gasped. Stone caught the wind with the second flap and lifted smoothly into the air. Spray showered the boat.

“That was impressive,” Balm admitted.

It was. Moon wasn’t sure he would be able to do it.

Stone gained some height, water still sliding off his wings, then banked around. “I can’t see him,” Kalam said, rubbing his eyes in frustration. “I mean, I can see him, but I can’t make out detail.” He nodded toward the other Raksura. “I can see all of you fine.”

“I can’t see him either,” Moon said. He had always just considered it something that happened to line-grandfathers. No one else had ever remarked on it. He asked Chime, “Why is that?”

“I don’t know.” Chime shrugged his spines. “There isn’t a lot of mentor lore on line-grandfathers. For one thing, they’re rare, and for another . . .” He gestured toward Stone. “They don’t like to answer questions.”

Stone lined up for a dive toward Rorra. He flew low over the water, one clawed hand reaching down for her. It had to be frightening from Rorra’s perspective, even though she knew what was about to happen. Stone’s hand folded gently around her and pulled her out of the water. He tucked her against his chest, tilted up again, and banked around toward the direction where he had detected the Fell stench.

Jade sighed, and glanced around the little boat. “Well, we have a wait.”

They waited most of the afternoon. Moon had flown a little distance away and gone fishing, both because he needed to stretch his wings after the injury and because the dried fish from the sunsailer’s stores hadn’t been very satisfying. Magrim had admitted that the settlement he came from in Kish liked their fish raw, too. He got involved with showing Kalam how to slice one up and pick out the best bits. After they ate, the Raksura took turns napping, curling up on the warm deck. By unspoken consensus, they were getting ready for what could be another violent night.

At one point, while the others were resting, Jade told Moon, “Song apologized to me.”

“That’s good.” Moon could tell she meant a real apology, where she and Song had actually talked it over, and not just that Song had stopped arguing because Jade was the queen. “Was something bothering her?”

Jade shrugged her spines a little. “She’s been more aggressive, lately. It’s just a sign she’s growing up, wanting a more important place in the court. She’ll settle down.” Jade flicked a fish scale at Balm, sleeping nearby. “Balm was like that.”