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The storm had come out of nowhere, a wall of wind and rain sweeping off the water. Jade was thrown head over wings, barely able to stay in the air as she was blown far out over the sea. Righting herself just above the waves, she set her teeth and struggled back towards the shore. It had been supposed to be a boring trade journey, which was why she had been allowed to come along, and Jade had secretly hoped for something exciting to happen. She was now regretting the excitement, a little. She could hardly see through the rain, and her wings burned as she fought the wind. When she made it back to land, it was dark and no one else was there. She spent the night huddled in the lee of an old aqueduct, trying and failing to stay dry. It was cold.
In the morning, Jade crawled into the sun and tried to assess the situation. The ruins she was in were perched on a rocky shore, spilling down towards an inland sea. The water stretched out in front of her, trackless and empty, and behind the stone structure she’d taken refuge in there were empty hills covered in yellow grass higher than her head. The only sign of life was far down the shoreline, where lines of smoke climbed skyward. Her whole body ached, and her stomach twisted with hunger. There were no signs of Raksura anywhere she looked.
“The warriors are going to come and get me,” Jade said, out loud to the air. “They just have to collect everybody who got blown away in the storm, and that’s going to take a little bit of time. I need to—” She took a deep breath, looking around. “I need to take care of myself until they get here.”
If you got lost in the forest you were supposed to stay in one place, but this didn’t seem like a good place to stay. She didn’t have any way to start a fire, and the herdbeasts visible above the grass were too big for a half-grown queen to take down by herself. There weren’t even any fish in the water, just a series of scuttling crabs the size of her thumbnail. And—she eyed the crevice she’d been in overnight—there really wasn’t any shelter.
“If there’s a fire, that means a groundling city,” Jade said, out loud again to hear herself talk. The wind pulled at the dry grass growing out of the ruins, a rustling wave. “Groundlings have shelter and food, and if I go there and stay there, the warriors can find me there, right?”
There were none of her clutch mates to tell her if it sounded like a good idea or a bad one, no teachers to offer suggestions, just the wind. A bronze-y beetle the size of her palm emerged from the ruin, and then disappeared back into the rock when she grabbed at it.
She couldn’t even get bugs to eat here, and she hated when the warriors made her eat bugs for survival lessons. She was going to the city, where she could get actual food. Jade shifted and prepared to jump skyward, and then made a muffled noise as her shoulders ignited with pain. She stumbled into a crouch on the ground, a hand coming up to feel the joint where her wing met her chest. It felt hot under her hand. Stretching out her wings made her make another noise she was guiltily glad none of the grown-ups were here to hear her make. She must have flown too hard yesterday.
She breathed in through her nose once, then shifted back to groundling. The wind washed over her. Jade started walking.
She could clearly see the groundling city causing the smoke, a blotch of darker color against the yellow hills. But no matter how much she walked, it always seemed to still be another few shoreline curves away. She walked all day, until she was starting to wobble as she moved and she had gone past being hungry into a vague aching emptiness, and it was still just a little further, an expanse of shiny tile roofs perched on stilts over the water. When she finally stepped onto one of the wooden bridges that connected the city to the shore, it had been dark for long enough that the stars were out.
The city was made up of boxy wooden homes and layered wooden streets, painted shutters closed against the night. Jade could smell cooking bread and spices and smoke, hear the sound of conversations inside the buildings, but every door she went by was closed. There was a groundling in a voluminous cloak coming along the street towards her, and she stepped in their way.
“Hello, where would I go for food?” she said in careful Altanic. Really, she was barely even hungry any more. She mostly wanted to rest. “Or the—” she stopped. She didn’t know how to say “bower” in the trade language. “Places to sleep?”
The groundling drew back from her, lip curling. The light from the cracks in the shutters of a nearby home illuminated a broad horned ridge of a nose under their hood. “I don’t have money for you, beggar,” they responded. They had a broad accent that was hard to understand, and Jade felt her eyebrow ridges pull together listening to him. The groundling waved a hand and then plucked their cloak away from Jade, so it wouldn’t touch her. “Go sleep in an alley or something, filthy mutt.”
“I’m not a beggar, I just don’t have trade with me right now,” Jade started, heated, but the groundling was already striding away, footsteps clattering on the broad boards of the road. The wind whipped down the road, making Jade’s teeth chatter.
She set her jaw and kept going down the dark street.
The next person she asked was similarly unhelpful, and the third person didn’t even say anything, just pulled her cloak away and hurried down the street. She was so tired her eyes were blurring, and her hands were numb from the cold. She needed to find a place to sleep. Jade found a squat building with flags out front that meant travelers could sleep there, she vaguely remembered, but the door was locked. She was too tired to keep searching. Jade went around the side of the building, into the alley between the inn and the structure next to it.
The boards that made up the floors of the buildings didn’t quite meet each other, and she had to pick her way over uneven footing and gaps. The chimney of the inn was covered in a plain tile, and it was putting off heat. If she got right up under the eaves of the building, she’d be protected from the rain and warm. Jade crouched down next to it, preparing to curl into a ball to sleep.
There was a dark blotch next to the chimney that uncurled and hissed at her.
Jade hissed back, blunt groundling hand raised for a fight.
The figure moved resentfully in the dark. “I’m already here,” they said.
Jade looked at the little corner the figure was in, eyes adjusting to the dark. They had made a tiny little bower in a depression between boards, with a woven grass mat underneath them, and a wooden crate for the wall at their feet. It was the worst bower she’d ever seen. “There’s room for two people,” she pointed out.
The figure hissed again, drawing their legs up next to them. “I got here first.”
With the figure’s legs out of the way, there was an obvious space next to them. Jade crawled into it and hugged her knees, ignoring the indignant silence from the figure next to her. Now that she had finally stopped moving, it was harder to ignore the way everything hurt. Her limbs felt heavy. The heat from the chimney was soothing the ache in her back, and she was so tired. “You made it nice,” she told the figure, because you had to be polite to your host. “It’s a really good—” she still didn’t know the word for bower in this language. “Place to sleep.”
“You need to leave in the morning,” the person told her. They moved so that Jade could lean on them.
“I’m going to leave very soon,” Jade told them, and yawned. “People are coming to get me.”
The figure made a non-committal noise, but Jade was already falling asleep.
She woke up to someone poking her. Jade uncurled and hissed at the clutch-mate in her space, and then drew back and blinked sleep out of her eyes. Not her clutch mate. There was a young groundling that was about her size looking at her. He was wearing tattered clothes and had messy dark hair, and a yellowing bruise on his cheek. “We have to leave, they kick us out of this alley in the morning,” the groundling said. He had a different accent than the groundlings who’d talked to her last night, and it wasn’t quite as hard to understand.
Jade blinked at him. “Why’d they do that? It’s an alley .”
“They don’t like having beggars here when people can see, I guess,” the groundling said. He pushed on her shoulder until she shifted off the grass mat, and then rolled it up and tied it to his back. “They throw water on you if you sleep too long.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Jade told him, wrinkling her nose. “We were out of the way anyways, and people like having children sleeping around.”
He looked at her with his eyebrows raised, and then stood up. “No they don’t,” he said. The groundling started out of the alley. “I’m not a child anyways. You can be a child if you want.”
Jade scrambled after him. “I’m not a child ,” she told him. “I’m a queen. I’m just not fully grown.”
“Ah-huh.” He made a disbelieving noise and started walking along the street, staying close to the buildings.
This was the first person who’d talked to her. Her body ached, and she was so hungry it felt like her stomach was going to eat through her spine. Jade followed after him. “Where are you going now? Do you know where to get food? My name’s Jade, what’s yours?”
He glanced at her. “I’m going to get food,” he said. “You can come too I guess,” he continued after a pause. “And my name’s Moon. You don’t know how to do anything, do you.”
Jade bristled. “I know how to read a map and read Altanic and Kedaic and Raksuran, and I know how to take down a herdbeast, and I know lots of things.” She tried to think of more things she knew how to do, but her brain mostly contained hunger.
“Ah-huh.” He made another of those disbelieving noises.
One of the groundlings on the street knocked into Jade and then made a displeased noise, grabbing their cloak away from her and muttering something about “filthy beggars”. Jade recovered from the stumble she had been knocked into and started to hiss, hand coming up in an angry fist. Moon grabbed her arm and dragged her a couple steps further away.
“That’s stupid,” he said to her. “Don’t fight grown-ups.”
“ They knocked into me ,” Jade said, rage making her spines bristle. Her whole mane would have flared if she was in her winged form, but she was still a little afraid of how sore she’d be if she shifted. Everything already hurt to move. She glared at Moon. “And then they called me names!”
“Just don’t get in people’s way,” he said. “You don’t know things because you’re new, but I know things cause I’ve been here for a while.”
She was new. And she did not know things. The groundling had already moved on. Jade swallowed down her indignant rage and followed Moon down the street, sticking to the sides of the road next to the buildings. “How did you know I was new?” she asked.
Moon gave her a scornful look and then looked at the groundlings walking by, wrapped in voluminous cloaks and visible skin a combination of yellow and blotchy green. Jade’s blue and silver skin and lack of clothing was blatantly obvious.
“Well, yes, but,” Jade started, and then waved a hand. “Fine. How long have you been here? Why did you come here?”
“A couple months,” Moon said. “And I didn’t want to get eaten by a vargit.” They had come to a small square which was lined with stalls that had their entire fronts open up into big shutters the groundlings were pushing out of the way. The air smelled of frying dough and vegetables, and a rich something that made her stomach twist. “Over here,” Moon said, grabbing her hand and heading towards one of the stalls.
Jade followed, so grateful for food to be happening that she had to sniff a few times. Moon headed towards a stall and then stepped past it, into the alley between the buildings. “Wait, no,” Jade said. She pointed back out to the square. “Where are you going, the food is out there?” She could smell it, spices and oil making her mouth water.
Moon raised his eyebrows at her. “Yeah, the food that you can trade for. If you don’t have trade, you gotta go to the garbage.”
“I’m not eating from the garbage ,” Jade said indignantly, spines flaring.
Moon dropped her hand, face going flat. “Well if you’re too good to eat the food that’s free, go on and get the stuff that the groundlings are having.”
“I will!” Jade shot back. She glared at him, hands balled into fists at her sides, and then she turned and marched back to the front of the stall.
There was food cooking at several broad pans at the back of the stall, and people standing at narrow tables at the sides. There was a person with their cloak brushed back over their shoulders standing by the food, keeping an eye on everything. They must be the Arbora in charge of the food. Jade approached the figure. “Hello, can I have some food?” she asked.
She could see that in one of the pans they were cooking strips of dough until they turned golden, then taking them out and dipping them in sugar. It smelled so good that it made her ribs hurt. The Arbora-groundling in charge of the food looked down his horned nose at her. “It’s a silver each, two silver if you want three.”
“I don’t have silver,” Jade started, trying to stand straight despite the ache in her stomach. “But when my court comes to get me—”
“If you can’t pay, get out of my stall,” the groundling said. He looked past her, at someone else. “Done with the plate?” He stepped towards one of the figures at the side of the stall.
“I, I can’t pay now —” Jade started again. “—but I promise soon.”
“Get out of my stall , whelp,” the groundling said, turning and backhanding her in the face.
The blow smashed into Jade’s nose, a pain that made her vision explode with stars. She was thrown back several steps towards the entrance of the stall. Blood dripped down over her lip, salty and metallic. Jade licked her teeth and shook herself, then squared her shoulders and stepped back into the stall.
A hand closed on her arm and she whirled around with her teeth bared. Moon was there, tugging her towards the exit. “Come on, idiot,” he said.
“Oh now there’s two of them,” the stall-Arbora said, pushing his sleeves back and stepping forward. “Get out of my stall, you filthy little runts.”
“Don’t talk to him like that,” Jade spat, furious, and then Moon put a hand over her mouth and pulled her backwards. He was surprisingly strong for someone her age, and Jade stumbled backwards.
“Don’t fight grown-ups,” Moon hissed in her ear, and pulled her back out of the stall. The groundling in charge of the stall watched them go, then turned back to talking to the cloaked figures at the sides of the stall.
Jade threw Moon’s hand off her arm and shook him off her face, and then glared at him. “Maybe you can’t fight but I can .”
“You can’t fight all of them!” Moon glared back. He tossed up his hands. “There’s too many of them, and they’re bigger! Don’t be stupid.”
“I don’t care that they’re bigger,” Jade said. She could still taste blood in her mouth, and she was still hungry. “I can shift, and then I have claws, I’ll be fine.”
Moon eyed her. His hands were balled into fists at his sides. “You shouldn’t shift, people don’t like it,” he said shortly.
“Why?” Jade demanded, outraged. “Are you also gonna say I shouldn’t walk on my feet?”
He glared back at her. “I don’t know why, they just hate it. People get mad at you and chase you out if you shift. Don’t do it. Don’t shift and don’t fight grown-up groundlings.” He shrugged his shoulders at her, a tiny illustrative lunge. “It’s a bad idea.”
Jade bared her teeth at him, burning up with rage. “If they try to chase me out I can shift, and fly, and I can bite them,” she shot back.
“They’re gonna get sticks , and arrows, and there’s more of them, and they’re bigger, and they’ll keep hitting you.” Moon’s tone was flat. “You have to just get hit and leave.”
“Maybe you can get hit and leave, I’m a queen ,” Jade spat.
Moon drew back for a moment, jaw clenched, and then threw up his hands. “Get your arm broken, then. Get all your ribs broken. Get shot by arrows. It’ll work great. You know so well how this works!”
Jade sucked in a breath, bristling, and stomped her foot, once, just to let out the fury. Her muscles still ached. “It shouldn’t be like this,” she said. “This is bad .”
“Look, don’t fight things that are bigger than you, that’s just sense,” Moon said after a pause. He held up a finger, counting options off. “Don’t fight the big fish that can eat you, don’t go into the water when there’s one of the big crabs there, don’t try to take the herdbeasts that are taller than the grass, don’t fight grown-ups.”
With nothing to aim it at Jade’s rage was draining away, and it left her feeling horribly weepy. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “I haven’t fought a fish,” she said, and then scrubbed a hand over her face.
“Don’t fight the ones that can eat you,” Moon said, deadpan.
Jade rolled her eyes.
Moon rolled his eyes back, and then headed down the alley. Jade followed. At the back of the stall, there was a heap of slimy dough, fruit ends, and burnt fried parts. He picked a burned piece out of the heap and handed it to her, then picked out one for himself and bit into it. “Here. Food.”
Jade took the fried thing and bit into it. It was cold, and the burnt edges hurt the roof of her mouth when she bit, and it was still so delicious to be eating food that it made her chest hurt. “Hmmph,” she said, and focused on eating.
She wiped crumbs off her mouth when she was done. “Do you have to get all your food from the garbage?” she asked.
“Most of it,” Moon said. He eyed her, eyebrows raised sarcastically. “Do you think that’s bad?”
“No,” Jade told him. She poked the garbage heap, but there was nothing else big enough to eat there. “If the grown-ups won’t give you food, that’s smart.” She glared in no particular direction. “They still shouldn’t do that, though.”
“Well, they do,” Moon told her. He wiped his hands off on his shirt. “This place is out of food, let’s go to the next one.”
Moon knew all the different stalls and what kinds of food they threw out. He led Jade to one where they’d dumped out squares of white cheese in a green sauce. The sauce had trickled away through the gaps in the floor of the alley, but the blocks of cheese had been left behind. Jade crouched next to it, picking them up one by one. Moon reached for the same square she did and she hissed at him, mouth full of cheese. Moon hissed back and snatched the square out from under her hand. Jade flared her spines as Moon popped the square in his mouth, holding eye contact. There was only one square left.
Moon nudged the last square in her direction. “There,” he said, grumpy.
“You have it,” Jade said, nudging it back.
“No, I don’t want it,” Moon said, shuffling backward. He looked at Jade. “Don’t lean on the chimney. It’ll come apart and then they’ll be mad at you.”
Jade looked at him and moved to put her back more firmly against the overlapping tiles of the chimney.
Moon snorted and then looked thoughtfully down the alley, still crouching on his haunches. “There’s three or four stalls that throw out their food at the end of the day,” he said. “In the morning you only really get the stuff that the rats didn’t get. We should go around after dark.”
She could feel the tiles of the chimney behind her back settle slightly as she leaned on them. They were just balanced atop each other, a precarious tower at the back of the stall. The heat soothed the ache in her ribs. She took the last bit of cheese and bit into it, the square breaking into fragments between her teeth. “I’m not staying, actually,” she told him.
“Ah-huh,” Moon said. He didn’t look convinced.
“‘I’m not ,” Jade responded, stung. “There’s warriors who are gonna come and get me, or probably my line-grandfather is gonna come, probably.” She’d been thinking about it. If the warriors couldn't find her the whole time she was walking maybe they weren’t very good at tracking, but line-grandfather Stone would find her no matter how far she’d been blown off-course. “He’s really good at tracking and he’s as big as a house,” she told him. She eyed the stalls they were crouched behind. “Bigger, maybe.”
“Ah-huh,” Moon said again.
“He is ,” Jade said, glaring.
“You got separated in a fight or what, or a storm?” Moon’s eyebrows were raised.
“A storm,” Jade told him. “It was a really bad storm.”
“And you didn’t see them after you got separated? And it’s been days?”
That sounded bad. “It hasn’t been that many days,” Jade said.
“They’re probably dead,” Moon declared. He picked at the ground, pulling a fragment of cheese out from between the boards of the alley and popping it in his mouth. “There’s skylings that hunt in storms.”
“They’re not dead ,” Jade shot back. Even if one or two of them got eaten during the storm, even if the idea of open jaws and crushing coils during that storm was making her stomach sink, surely someone would have survived, and they would be coming for her. She set her jaw. Even if all of the warriors were dead, it was impossible that something had happened to line-grandfather Stone. He was too big and too good at fighting for anything to ever have hurt him. Jade glared at Moon. “You just don’t know cause you’re a groundling and stupid about hunting. They’re fine and they’re coming to get me.”
“I’m not a groundling, and I do know how to hunt,” Moon returned, shoulders tight.
Jade eyed him. “Oh yes, you look like a skyling,” she said, sarcastic.
“I could have wings,” Moon said, bristling. “I’m really good at flying.”
She folded her arms. “If you have wings, why are you hiding them?”
Moon glared at her. “Because—” He threw up his hands and scrambled to his feet. “Fine. I’m hungry anyways. I’ll show you how to hunt.”
“I already know how to hunt,” Jade told him, straightening.
“You said you don’t know how to hunt fish,” Moon returned. He showed her his teeth, triumphant. “So you don’t know this actually.”
Jade glared at him, but her interest was piqued at the idea of hunting. “Fine. Show me how groundlings hunt fish. If you can.”
He glared back, and then started marching down the alley.
Moon crouched on the top of a beam running between the pillars that supported the city. The pillars were just about as big as Jade could span with her arms, hundreds of wooden beams in clusters holding up the buildings above them. Moon had led her to a spot where there was a hole in the wooden ground and wiggled into it, and then led her down into the semi-dark drowned cathedral above the water.
“So,” Moon said. He eyed an isopod as big as his head that was crawling up the pillar behind Jade. Light came down between cracks above them and flooded in from the sides of the city. Out in the sunlight, there were groundlings in boats, looking into the water with spears. “You can eat the bugs when you’re here, but fish is better.”
Jade folded her arms. “I don’t see you have any nets or—“ what else did groundlings use to catch fish? Even if Moon said he wasn’t a groundling, which she was dubious about. “—ropes,” she finished, skeptical.
Moon showed her his teeth, a gleam in the dim. “I don’t need nets.” He turned and started scrambling his way out onto a beam spanning between the clusters of pillars. It arched up towards the roof, so that he was just a tiny figure a tower’s height above the water. Jade kept an eye on him, and also eyed the isopod as it bumbled closer. She really didn’t like eating bugs, but she was hungry enough it seemed like a better idea than usual.
Moon stayed up on the beam, crouched over the water, and then tipped over so that he dove towards the waves. He blurred in the air, small figure transforming into a dark shape with wings tucked close to his back. He hit the waves with barely a splash.
Jade nearly fell off the beam.
She scrambled along it, looking to get further down. She could see a dark figure in the water, cutting through the waves with a gleam of something silver in his mouth. The pillar was very steep to climb along, and she couldn’t get traction with her blunt groundling hands. Well there was an obvious thing to do here, even if she was worried about the consequences. Jade huffed under her breath and shifted, hunching her shoulders against expected pain.
Her winged form didn’t feel any worse than her groundling form did. Everything hurt, but in a dull way. Exasperated with the world, Jade sunk her claws into the pillar and started climbing down.
Moon emerged from the water with a fish in his mouth, climbing up the pillar with his claws. “That’s how you hunt fish,” he said, spitting the fish out onto his chest.
“You’re not a groundling!” Jade said. She was crouched on the pillar above him, spines bristling with excitement.
Moon eyed her warily. “I already told you that.” He tucked the fish under one arm and went back to climbing, circling around her.
“No, but you’re Raksuran !” Jade followed. “You’re like me, we’re the same!”
Moon looked at her once and then sat down on the beam, attention on the fish in his hands. He took a bite out of it. “We’re different colors.”
“But we can both shift!” Jade shifted to groundling form and back again, by way of illustration, and nearly fell into the water as she lost the traction of her claws. She got them back and latched onto the beam, moving closer to Moon. “You said you could shift, but I thought that meant you were a groundling shifter. You’re not, you’re Aeriat, you’re Raksuran. You’re a consort, and I’m a queen! What court are you from?”
Moon squinted at her. His gaze kept sliding to her wings, tucked against her back. “What’s a—” he shook his head, attention going back to his fish. “I’m not from a court, and I’m not a consort.”
“You are ,” Jade told him. She moved forward, tail wrapping around the beam under her for balance. “You’re black-coloured and you’re Aeriat, so you’re obviously a consort.” She hadn’t seen a consort her age before, but she could put two and two together. Jade continued, the future opening up in front of her. “That means you’re special and delicate and I should take care of you. Do you want to be mated when we’re big?”
Moon gave her a look of absolute disdain, biting into the fish again. “I’m not a consort and I’m not delicate,” he said through a mouthful of fish. “ You’re delicate, cause you don’t know how to hunt.”
“You’re obviously a consort,” Jade said. She glared at him. “And I know how to hunt. I probably know better than you do, cause you’re supposed to look pretty and make everybody get along and not fight.”
Moon looked at her with his eyebrows raised over the fish as he tore another mouthful out of it. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Jade opened and closed her mouth, and then bristled at him. “Well, that’s supposed to be, I know.”
“You know a lot of things that are how they’re supposed to be that isn’t how they are ,” Moon said. He finished stripping the meat off the fish and threw away the spine, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t think I’m a—what you said—you’re wrong.” He started moving along the beam back out over the water again, claws latched into the wood.
Jade made an exasperated noise, then realized something and laughed. She followed him on the beam. “If you’re not Raksuran, how do you know this language?” She’d switched out of Altanic without thinking when she saw him shift, and Moon had answered in the same language.
Moon looked at her, clearly at a loss for words. Jade wrapped her tail around the beam and grinned triumphantly. He scoffed under his breath and waved a taloned hand. “It doesn’t matter, do you want to hunt fish or not?”
“It does matter, line-grandfather Stone is going to come and get me and he’ll get you too and bring you back to the court and then you can learn to be pretty,” Jade told him. She considered that, both in abstract and the concept of Moon specifically in that situation. “Or just hunt more,” she revised the plan. “That sounds better.”
Moon made a noncommittal noise, then pointed down into the water. “You can see the fish from here, see? If you dive down and get them, you can bite at the back of their neck, and then it kills them. You just have to watch out for the big fish that come in to eat you, and don’t go out in the sun where it’s deep cause the big crabs are there.”
“Watch out for the big fish and the crabs,” Jade repeated, searching the water. She could see just the barest hint of movement under the waves. “Just dive and bite, right?”
“Well, you have to swim, too,” Moon started, but Jade had already thrown herself over the side.
Swimming was harder than it looked. Jade had to paddle constantly to keep her head above the water, and waves kept smacking her in the face. She’d caught two fish though, and the ache of hunger in her stomach had subsided to something less urgent. The water was cold, and her fingers and toes were going numb.
“We can go hunt bugs if you want,” Moon suggested, swimming alongside her using his tail. He barely splashed at all. “There are lots if you go into the pillars.”
“ No ,” Jade told him, and spat out a mouthful of water. There was the gleam of something silver ahead of her where it caught the sun, and she headed towards it. “I’m catching a fish .”
The gleam was a fish nearly the length of her arm, hanging in the water and opening and closing its mouth. Jade swam up behind it, trying to be stealthy until she was just an arms-length away. The fish was still there, staring blankly. She gathered her tail behind her and tried to surge through the water.
Her claws skimmed over the fish’s scales and it darted away between her hands. Gone.
Jade growled, accidentally swallowing water.
Moon appeared alongside her, lounging on his back. “It helps if they don’t see you coming,” he said.
Jade took a swipe at him and he easily evaded it and swam another few body-lengths away. He turned in the water and paddled upright, looking pleased. “I’m not a fish,” he told her, and then looked up.
He and Jade had come out from underneath the city without realizing. He was next to one of the groundlings’ boats, and there was a figure wrapped in a cloak looking down at him, spear poised above his head. “You’re some kind of dakti, you are,” the figure said, horrified and full of rage.
Jade saw Moon’s eyes widen. He dropped below the water, shifting back to groundling as his head dipped under the surface. The groundling drove the spear down, the point of it catching Moon in the shoulder. They yanked back, Moon caught on the barbs like a fish. “A shifter!” the groundling said, voice on the verge of a shout, and the sound was picked up by the groundlings in the other boats that were crowding around. “Filthy Fell, sneaking under the city.”
“I’m not a Fell!” Moon yelled, wiggling furiously. He threw himself backwards but he couldn’t come free of the barbs of the spear, and he made a horrible noise as he failed. Jade could see the bloody mess that his shoulder was turning into through the hole in his shirt.
The groundling grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged him into the boat, manhandling him with the spear so that Moon couldn’t reach him. “Head us over to the deep,” the groundling said in their thick accent to the person in the bow of the boat. “Gotta get rid of this trash.”
“Don’t put me in the deep!” Moon yelled, trying to thrash again and again stopping as the person punched into him with the barbed spear.
“He’s not a Fell he’s a Raksuran ,” Jade yelled, or tried to. Her mouth fell below the surface of the water and she inhaled seawater. Choking, she pushed up towards the surface again, then started paddling towards the boats. They had oars out now, and the whole group of groundlings was pulling away from her faster than she could follow.
“Get rid of the Fell before he starts eating people,” the groundling said, voice diminishing over the waves.
“I don’t eat people!” Moon yelled. He was starting to sound panicked. “Don’t put me in the deep! I’m not—I don’t eat people! Let me go!”
The boats were receding into the distance now, far beyond where Jade could get to by swimming. They were heading for a place where the colour of the water changed, from yellow-brown to a deeper blue black as the ground dropped off. She could barely hear Moon struggling, now.
Jade shifted and threw herself upwards, splashing hugely as she took to the air. She ignored the way her shoulders burned as she chased after the boats.
“Don’t put me in the deep!” Moon was shouting, kicking furiously. There was something moving in the darkness below the boats. She could just make out many articulated legs, emerging from the deep as a shadow fell over the water. Jade thought horribly of what Moon had said about big crabs, and set her teeth. Moon had managed to turn himself around and was clinging to the side of the boat. “I don’t eat people, I just eat food. Don’t put me in the deep!”
Jade landed claws-first on the groundling pinning Moon. “Let him go, he’s mine, he’s Raksuran,” she yelled, and bit into the nearest arm.
The groundling yelled and fell over, letting go of the spear. Moon shot away to the end of the boat, dragging the weapon behind him. He made a pained, angry noise. The boat rocked wildly underneath Jade, and she clung to the groundling she was attached to, blood filling her mouth.
“There’s another one!” someone yelled.
“Don’t go in the water!” another voice shouted urgently.
A spear hurtled down towards Jade and she scrambled aside, the point of it thudding though her spines.
“Shift!” she unlatched her jaw from the groundling’s arm long enough to yell down the boat. “Moon, fly away!”
“I’m stuck !” He yelled back, hand going to the barbs in his shoulder.
More groundlings were circling around now, and more spears were stabbing in towards her. One of the other groundlings made a grab for the weapon still stuck in Moon and yanked him to his feet. Moon made a horrible wounded sound, and Jade screamed furiously at the figures around her, slashing at the nearest body. They were all taller than her, and had vicious barbed spears, and something was moving in the water beneath the boats.
A shadow fell over the boat, and a large set of talons closed around Jade, scooping her into the air. In seconds, the boats had diminished to the size of her hand, scattered across the water like strewn fruit. Jade turned around in her grandfather’s claws and hit them with her fists. “You have to go back!”
“That is not a good place, granddaughter,” Line-grandfather Stone said, voice rumbling in his chest. “I’m taking you home.”
“You have to go back for Moon!” Jade shouted. She tried to wiggle free of the claws holding her. “He’s a consort and they’re going to feed him to the crabs! They think he’s Fell!”
Stone was still flying away from the city, the houses on pillars diminishing behind them on the horizon. “You found a Fell?”
Jade saw the horrible possibility of Moon left behind, thrown into the water and held down with spears while that big shape climbed towards the surface. She slashed furiously at her grandfather’s talons with her claws, trying to make him drop her with no success. “He’s not Fell!” she managed, breathless with rage. “He’s Raksuran but he doesn’t know, he’s a consort, and he’s going to be mine if he wants! He spoke Raksuran to me and he fed me food and let me sleep in his bower. He’s not Fell !”
“Hmm,” Stone said, and then turned on a wingtip in the air. “Let’s go see this consort of yours.”
Moon was pale and breathing hard when grandfather Stone put him and Jade down on a rocky outcropping, the city a tiny point on the horizon. Jade scrambled over to him, reaching for the spear still in his shoulder. “We need to get this out,” she told him.
Moon bared his teeth at her. “I know that,” he retorted. His hand went to the wound, hovering over it painfully. “It’s stuck.”
“I can pull it,” Jade said, hands still out.
Moon swiped at her with his blunt groundling hand, and Jade glared at him. Moon glared back.
“Grandfather Stone?” Jade turned. “We need to get the spear out of Moon.”
Her grandfather had shifted back to his groundling form, and he was crouched on the ground going through his pack. “I can see that,” he said. He produced a knife and approached Moon. “Hold still.”
Moon scrambled backwards, baring his teeth. “I’m not—I don’t—” He braced himself, hissing under his breath, eyes on the weapon. “Stay away.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Stone told him, crouching on his heels and looking at Moon. He balanced the knife on his knee, unhurried. “That spear’s stuck in your shoulder, I need to cut it out or you can’t shift.”
Moon breathed out, the sound ragged with pain and concentration. “You can shift too,” he said, eyes flicking between Jade and grandfather Stone. He sounded like he was working things out mentally. “You’re not mad at me for shifting?” He swallowed. “You’re not—Fell?”
“Of course we’re not Fell, we’re Raksuran ,” Jade informed him. “Grandfather Stone is a consort too, he’s just really old. He’s not like the groundlings. And he’s really good at fighting, he’s killed so many Fell.”
Moon looked at Jade. “I’m gonna look like that when I’m old?”
“Yeah,” Jade said, nodding.
“If you live that long, which you’re not gonna do if you don’t let me get that spear out of your shoulder,” Stone told him.
Moon swallowed again and then settled on the stone, tipping his neck away from his shoulder and the weapon protruding from it. “Fine.” He looked fixedly at the edge of the stone, where grass was waving in the wind. “I haven’t killed any Fell. I haven’t met any,” he told the grass. “I just know that people think that I’m Fell when they see me?” His tone wavered into a vaguely uncertain note as he ended that thought.
Stone handed him a piece of leather and then took his shoulder in a hand. “Bite that. No, we’re not Fell. We kill Fell. You’ll kill a lot of them when you grow up, the way you were fighting. Deep breath. Good.” Finished with the knife, he pulled the spear out with a jerk and then dropped it on the stone. “Don’t shift, that might spread to your wings. We need to get you back to the colony, and one of the mentors can put you in a healing sleep.”
Moon was still pale, his hand going to his shoulder. His eyes darted between Jade, crouched next to him, and Stone, wiping the blade of his knife and putting it away. “You’re taking me with you?”
“Of course we are,” Jade told him. “You’re Raksuran, you belong with the colony.” She reached out and patted Moon’s shoulder. “The Arbora give you food when you’re home and you don’t even have to sleep in alleys.”
“Hmm,” Moon said. He looked dubious. “Sure.”
“You’re too young to live by yourself,” Stone said. He shifted, and then picked up both Jade and Stone, holding them close to his chest as he lept skyward. “You can leave when you’re bigger, if you don’t want to be part of the colony.”
Jade peered through the enclosing talons of her grandfather’s hand. She could just see Moon. “Or you can stay, and you and me can get mated when we’re older, and then we can go hunting together, if you don’t want to be delicate.”
“If you know how to hunt,” Moon said in response. “You had some trouble.”
“That was fish ,” Jade said, glaring through Stone’s talons. “I’m so good at hunting not-fish, I’ll show you when we get to the colony.”
Moon made a noncommittal noise.
“Yes, I am!” Jade said. She huffed out a breath. “And I told you they were going to come and get me. And you too, cause you’re a consort.”
Moon glanced up at Stone, looming above them the colour of slate and the size of a house. “When do I get big?”
“Uh, later, I think,” Jade said. She wasn’t sure about that, it was all in a haze of various things that happened after she grew up. She tried to sound authoritative, so Moon would know everything was gonna be fine. “When you’re old and hunt a lot.”
“Hmmm,” Moon said. It did not seem like Jade’s tone had won him over, but he sounded vaguely positive. He settled into line-grandfather Stone’s hand, looking less pale and less tense. “Okay.”