Free The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells Page B

structure collapsed.
    Moon jumped off, snapped out his wings, and beat hard to get high enough to reach another dangling rope net. Clinging to it, he looked back to see the kethel going down under the heavy logs. Stone perched on the wall, sweeping his tail around to knock more logs and debris down after it.
    The kethel shrieked one last time, its body twisting in death throes. Moon breathed out in relief and started to climb.
    Then from below, he heard a voice, raspy and thick, but still loud enough to carry. “Stone, absent elder of Indigo Cloud!”
    His claws hooked in the net, Moon looked back. A dakti was trapped in the broken remnant of the platform, crushed between two logs. Its mouth was open, the voice echoing out from the distended throat. It said, “Is that your get? We thought you too feeble now to breed.”
    It was the voice of a Fell ruler, speaking in the Raksuran language through the dying dakti. It knows we’re here. It knows Stone’s name, Moon thought, a chill running through his blood. It’s seen me.
    Stone made a noise, a reverberating growl that was more weary annoyance than anger. He reached up and closed his fist around the dakti, crushing it.
    Moon twitched to settle his spines, and started to climb again. The instant of panic was gone, and he told himself to be rational. The groundlings said that what one ruler knew, they all knew, but that couldn’t be entirely true. There were different flights of Fell, and they fought each other for territory; surely they wouldn’t share knowledge. And yes, a ruler might have seen him through a dakti, but it had been more interested in Stone. It would think Moon was just another Raksura.
    On his way back up through the mound he found a wounded dakti taking the same route, caught it, and tore its throat out. At least it didn’t try to talk to him.
    He climbed out of the top passage into fresh, cool air and twilight, the stars coming out in a sky turning from blue to deep purple. Moon flew back to the rocky perch on the next hill. He was covered with dust and Fell blood, scratched and sore.
    The sudden whoosh startled him. Moon hissed and scrambled away, tumbling down the hill. He landed in a clumsy crouch, but when he looked back, Stone was standing on the rock in groundling form. Stone said, “Come here.”
    Moon hesitated, all too aware that if he wanted to run, he should have done it before now. He couldn’t outfly Stone without a good head start, even when he wasn’t already exhausted from a long day’s flight. The worse part was that he didn’t want to run.
    Tense and reluctant, he climbed back up to the rock. He shifted to groundling, facing Stone.
    “Sorry,” Stone said, which wasn’t what Moon was expecting. “You all right?”
    He reached out to brush the dirt off Moon’s forehead.
    Moon shied away, startled and self-conscious. “Yes.”
    Stone watched him for a moment, then let his breath out. “Will you still come with me to Indigo Cloud?”
    Moon hesitated. He had always thought that he was flying into a fight; not talking about it had just let him ignore it until they got there. And he was going to have to deal with the Fell sometime. “You think the Fell are already there.”
    “Yes, they could be there now. They know we’re weak, ready to be hit. I don’t know how much time we’ve got.” Stone winced, as if it hurt to admit it. “It’ll take three days at the speed we’ve been traveling. I can make it in one.”
    Moon nodded. That would give him more time to think, at least. “Show me which way to go and I’ll follow—”
    “Or I could take you with me. Now.”
    Moon eyed him. After Stone’s rescue, he knew what being carried was like. He would have to be in his other form most of the time to stand the cold and the wind, and he had already spent more than a day that way. It was one thing to keep flying on the edge of exhaustion when you knew you could land and collapse when you couldn’t take it anymore; it was