The Siren Depths (16 page)

“No, I—” Tempest began, then stopped, her spines flicking in agitation. Moon realized he had given her an out, that if he took responsibility for the fight, then Opal Night couldn’t blame Emerald Twilight.

The consort hissed, grabbed Moon’s wrist and pulled him out of the room. Out in the passage, several Arbora and warriors waited, listening intently, frozen in consternation. As the consort appeared, they hurriedly cleared a path, some of them climbing right up the walls. The only one Moon recognized was Russet. As they passed her, the consort snapped, “Send for Lithe.”

The consort took the first turn up a ramp that wound deeper into the tree. Moon had assumed he was being thrown out of the court, but this wasn’t the way to the colony’s main entrance. He planted his feet and wrenched his wrist out of the consort’s grip, scales rasping against his groundling skin. The consort turned back, spines lifting. Moon said, “Where are we going?”

The consort lashed his tail impatiently. “To the consorts’ bowers.” He tilted his head. “Did you want to stay with them?”

“No.”

“Then come on.”

The consort took more turns, finally passing through a doorway onto a bridge that crossed one small curve of the central well. It was almost under the spray of the waterfall, and a cool damp updraft ruffled Moon’s hair. The bridge went under a heavy arbor of vines and through the inner wall of the tree, back into a passage heavily carved with figures of Aeriat and Arbora.

The passage ended in a big round room, all carved wood, with a beaten metal hearth bowl in the center. There were low benches here too, curved ones, covered with gray furs and cushions in dark fabrics. The consort pushed Moon down on the nearest. “Sit there.”

Moon sat. His head was starting to clear; the brisk walk and the cool mist from the waterfall had helped.

The consort paced away, spines flicking and his tail lashing impatiently, then he shifted to groundling. He was bigger than Moon in this form too, with a heavier build than Aeriat usually had. His skin was a lighter gold-bronze, and he had red-brown hair. His face was more square and blunt than Moon’s, or any other consort he had seen before. He was still handsome, but he looked like he was built for fighting rather than breeding. He was dressed in dark brown and leather, a shirt that left his arms bare to show off chased gold armbands. His expression was serious, not angry. Moon asked, “So you aren’t throwing me out of the colony?”

“What?” The consort glanced at him as if that was the craziest thing he had heard yet. “Of course not.”

A young Arbora in groundling form rushed in, stumbled to a halt as she saw them. She had dark copper skin and dark hair cut into a fluffy halo around her face, and a slim strong build under the faded blue shirt and pants she wore. She had a satchel slung over one shoulder and from the dirt smudges, looked like she had been called in from gardening.

Brow furrowed with concern, she looked from Moon to the consort. “Yes?”

“Take care of him,” the consort said, and walked out.

Moon stared after him. He called out, “If I ask nicely, can I be thrown out of the colony?”

The Arbora stepped closer, peering at Moon. “Russet said the foreign queen hit you in the face, but I didn’t believe her. I see I was wrong.”

The side of Moon’s face was still numb but he could feel the skin tightening with incipient swelling. “Who are you? Who was he?”

“Oh, I’m Lithe, a mentor. He was Umber, the consort of Onyx, the sister queen.” Lithe slipped the satchel off her shoulder and knelt. She sorted through it and dumped out some cloth packets of herbs. Her sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscular forearms and an array of bracelets, beads, and bright metal and polished stones. Ducking her head so her hair shielded her face, she added, “Ah…it was also suggested that I ask you if you had been…mistreated?”

“Not lately.” Looking past her, Moon saw they had an audience. Other Arbora gathered in the doorway from the passage, and more in a smaller doorway across the room. They were all dressed for outdoor work and carried a strong scent of loam. Realizing Moon was watching them, they retreated with some confusion, but from the rustling and whispers coming from the passage, they hadn’t gone far.

Lithe looked up at him and smiled uncertainly, clearly not sure how to take his answer. “That’s…good.” She got up to reach for a kettle. “How long were you with Indigo Cloud? Emerald Twilight told us a story about you being alone—”

“I was alone, until six months ago when Indigo Cloud’s line-grandfather found me,” Moon said. He had a question of his own. “Why did Opal Night abandon me, a female warrior, and four baby Arbora to die in the forests of the Abascene peninsula?”

“What?” Lithe almost dropped the kettle. There was a chorus of shocked gasps from the passage.

After a long moment, Lithe said, “What happened to the others?”

“They were eaten by Tath,” Moon said, not bothering to soften it, not saying “they died” or “they were killed” or any of the other words that were easier to hear but less true.

Silence stretched. Lithe set the kettle on the warming stones and looked down at it, biting her lip. “I don’t know what happened. I was born after the attack.” She cleared her throat. “Who were they? The Arbora, the warrior?”

“Leaf, Light, Bliss, and Fern. The warrior was called Sorrow.”

The Arbora just outside the room whispered to each other. Nobody seemed to have an answer. This was about what Moon had expected. And he didn’t see much point in staying here any longer. He pushed to his feet. “I’m leaving.” He could at least retrace the route between here and Indigo Cloud, looking for signs of Jade and the others.

Lithe glanced up, startled. “You can’t leave! The daughter queen wants to see you. She’s your clutchmate.”

“Clutchmate?” Moon repeated. For a moment the word didn’t make sense. “They said…Rise said I was the only survivor of the queen’s last clutch.”

“The only consort,” Lithe explained. “It was a mixed royal clutch, three consorts and two queens. One of the queens survived.” She hesitated. “Her name is Celadon. Your birthqueen is called Malachite.”

Moon shook his head, telling himself it didn’t change anything.

Lithe took that for confusion, and explained, “Malachite is the reigning queen. Onyx is the sister queen, but she’s descended from the bloodline that remained here when the court split up and half of it went to the east, generations ago.” Lithe handed Moon a cloth pad filled with herbs. Automatically he pressed it against his eye and felt the swelling start to ease immediately. Mentors augmented their healing simples with magic; the more powerful the mentor, the quicker the healing. Lithe must be very strong. “When the eastern branch of the court returned, forty turns or so ago, Malachite led them back here.” Lithe hesitated. “The consort who fathered you was killed by the Fell. They attacked the eastern colony and destroyed it.”

Moon took a deep breath, the scent of the sweet herbs tingling in his throat. “I knew it was the Fell.”

“Do you remember it?” Lithe asked, taking a seat on the fur mat near the hearth. The other Arbora had crept back into the doorways.

“No.” Sometimes Moon had thought there might be a buried memory, but he wasn’t sure if it was really there or just a construction of his imagination, made up of images of other places he had seen the Fell destroy. “I just…thought it was likely.”

“Before Indigo Cloud, you were really alone all that time? You were living as a solitary?”

“Yes.” Moon looked up, baring his teeth. “I didn’t know what a solitary was, I hadn’t seen another Raksura since the others were killed, I didn’t even know we were called Raksura—”

Lithe waved her hands. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it! We just—We weren’t sure how much of what Emerald Twilight told us was true. They said the queen of Indigo Cloud took you without knowing your bloodline because there were no other consorts in the court, and none from other courts who would consent.”

Moon wished yet again that Emerald Twilight had kept its mouth shut. “The sister queen,” he corrected. “The Arbora didn’t want to move the court back to the Reaches without a consort. Then the colony was attacked by Fell, and…then it didn’t matter.”

Lithe was watching him with a troubled expression. “Indigo Cloud took advantage of you.”

“Yes, but—” Moon had always seen it as the other way around, that he had been the one with the potential to take advantage of Indigo Cloud. He had always been aware of that and had tried not to, especially after realizing just how badly he wanted to stay. And it was none of Opal Night’s business. Did they really think they had taken him away from Indigo Cloud for his own good? It was tempting to believe it.
But Emerald Twilight didn’t think so.
And Zephyr hadn’t understood the reasoning behind it either, and she was from a court uninvolved in the situation and presumably with nothing to lose by expressing an honest opinion. “I wanted to stay.” Moon tossed the herb packet into the pile near Lithe’s satchel. “When Opal Night asked for me, you gave them an excuse to get rid of me.”

There were surprised murmurs from the Arbora in the doorway. Lithe seemed baffled. “But if all they needed was an excuse to get rid of you, why did you want to stay?”

Because it was my place! I never had a place before. It didn’t matter how I got it, it was mine.
Moon didn’t want to say that to these people. “Why did Malachite bring me here? What does she want from me?”

“You belong here,” Lithe said it like it was obvious. “When you talk to Malachite—”

“She had a chance to talk to me last night.”

Flustered, Lithe actually glanced at their Arbora audience for support, but they all precipitously retreated into the passage. So everyone knew that Malachite had seen him and changed her mind. He thought Lithe would say something about it, but she just said, “I’m sorry. I’ll take you up to a bower to rest.”

Moon wasn’t tired, but he knew sitting here wasn’t going to get him any answers. Not the kind of answers he wanted, anyway.

The consort’s bowers were above this central room, reached by twisty, narrow stairs that curved up through the tree’s inner walls. As Lithe led him upward, Moon said, “Where are the other consorts?”

“Most of them live in the other set of bowers, for Onyx’s bloodline. These are for the consorts of your bloodline.”

These rooms all felt empty. “So where are they?”

Lithe was a bad liar. She could have said that they were out flying or playing with the fledglings. Instead she said, “Ah…With Celadon.” Forestalling his next question, she added, “She’ll have to tell you herself.”

She turned and took the last few steps up into a bower that had been hastily prepared; a young male Arbora was still there, dumping a bucket of heating stones into the metal hearth. The room was round, the walls carved with flowers and trees, stretching up to a domed roof set with polished blue stones. A curved bed big enough for several people hung about ten paces up one wall, and across from it a wall section was carved out, forming a small balcony with an opening that from the angle must look out on the central well.

“Do you need anything?” Lithe asked him.

I need to not be here,
Moon thought. He dropped his pack on the floor. “Like what?”

Lithe hesitated. “Food…clothes?”

“No.” If she wasn’t going to answer his questions, what he mostly wanted was for her to leave.

As if that thought was evident, Lithe’s brow furrowed and she said, “It’ll be all right. You’ll see. We’re glad to have you here.”

Moon didn’t try to look as if he felt anything other than skeptical and bitter. Lithe gave in and left with the other Arbora.

Chapter Seven

M
oon waited until the sound of their steps had faded, then explored the bower. Toward the back was a doorway that led to a private bathing room, with a curved hot pool that could be filled from a channel in the wall. With no sign of a previous occupant, the rooms felt as if they had been unused for a long time. He went out to the passage and listened for a moment. He could still hear the faint sounds of conversation and movement from the Arbora, but they all seemed to be down in the consorts’ hall.

Moving quietly, he made a quick survey of the other bowers off these upper passages. He had been given one of the larger rooms, but none of the others were shabby. At first they all seemed unused, with no scent of recent occupation. The hearths were bare, the bedding and furs rolled up and stacked against the walls.

Until he got to the far end of the warren.

There, he found a group of large bowers which all showed signs of occupation. The hearths had warming stones recently renewed by a mentor, and furs, cushions, and baskets of belongings still lay on the floor. In one, a book had been left behind, its tooled leather cover loosely wrapped around the scroll of paper, lying forgotten on a cushion. The occupants had been gone just long enough for the scent to start to fade. Moon put his face down in the bedding, but all he could get was traces of Raksura. They had been gone at least a day.

Or a night.
They left last night, because that’s when Rise invited you to leave the guest rooms.
The court had meant for him to stay here in these bowers, but hadn’t wanted the other consorts of his bloodline nearby. Because they didn’t trust him? Because they didn’t want the other consorts contaminated by association? Because the other consorts were afraid of the crazy solitary?

The one thing Moon did manage to determine was that there was no other passage exit. To leave this area, he had to go out through the consorts’ hall, where the Arbora were still gathered.

He returned to his bower, and shifted to jump up to the balcony in the wall.

It was furnished as a seating area, with thick woven mats padding the wood and pillows to lean on. The opening looked out at the side of the waterfall, protected from the spray by a heavy trellis of vines, the green leaves veined with purple. The updraft filled the room with fresh cool air, scented of water and damp earth; it would be a good place to sleep. If Moon ever managed to sleep again.