Free Edge of Worlds (The Books of the Raksura) by Martha Wells Page B

helped Delin find a secure seat on a knob of wood, Balm told the warriors, “Jade wants you to come back to the court with us. She doesn’t want anyone out here through the night.”
    “Are you sure?” Coil asked. He was a male warrior of Pearl’s, though he had never been much involved in the infighting between the two factions. “We’re not worried.”
    “She doesn’t think it’s worth the risk,” Balm said. It was quiet at the moment, with treelings calling, and night birds and flying lizards coming out to hunt the clouds of evening insects. But a night without shelter in the suspended forest was always dangerous, and more so near a shaft clearing. Moon agreed with Jade that there wouldn’t be much point in watching the boat when the warriors couldn’t see it. Balm added, “And Delin says they won’t move the boat tonight.”
    “There are lights, as with our wind-ships,” Delin explained, wriggling to make sure he had a secure seat, “but they are not much use in deep forest like this.”
    Balm sent Coil and the others off toward the colony tree, and Moon told Delin, “We won’t be far away. We’ll make sure they’ve got you before we leave.”
    “I thank you for this,” Delin said, “and I will see you tomorrow at the place you showed me.”
    “Just be careful,” Moon said. Before they had left the colony, they had talked with Delin about the idea that the Fell might have an unwilling, or even willing, spy among the groundlings.
    Delin had just said, “That is one of the many things in this situation to be worried about.”
    With Balm and Chime, Moon retired to a sheltered spot higher up in another mountain-tree, where they had a better view of the flying boat. Groundlings were moving around on the open deck now, the one divided by the wedge-shaped spine. Delin waited to give the Raksura enough time to get into concealment, then began to shout.
    The groundlings heard him immediately and some ran through a doorway in the upper part of the boat. Worried, Chime said, “I hope they won’t do anything to him because he’s been with us.”
    “He didn’t think they would.” Moon didn’t feel easy about it himself, but Delin had seemed confident. But then Delin always seemed confident. He was as bad as Stone that way.
    A groundling came out onto the deck wearing a heavy backpack. He made some adjustment, tugged on something, then lifted smoothly off the deck into the air, with nothing to show how he had done it. “Some sort of spell?” Balm asked Chime.
    He shrugged his spines. “Maybe. It’s hard to tell. If it’s the same thing that keeps the boat aloft, I wonder how they control it.”
    Moon watched until the flying groundling disappeared into the canopy, then several moments later reappeared carrying Delin. They were too far away to see exactly how the groundling was doing it, but it made Moon uneasy to watch. He just didn’t trust groundlings to know how to carry someone while flying. But the pair landed safely on the flying boat’s deck. Balm said, “We should go.”
    Moon flicked his spines in reluctant agreement. They turned away and dropped off the branch to fly back to the colony.
    It had been a long day, and Balm and Chime were just as tired as Moon, so they all avoided the teachers’ hall where the Arbora and the warriors gathered, and headed for their various bowers.
    Moon climbed straight up the central well and over the ledge into the big queens’ hall. It was all quiet now, except for the fall of water into the fountain. Pearl and Ember were probably in her bower, and Stone might be up in his bower or down with the Arbora or anywhere else in the colony. Moon went through the passage into the sister queen’s bower.
    At first he didn’t think Jade was here, until he saw the pile of jewelry near the steaming bathing pool. The ready access to running water, and pools warmed by the mentors’ heating stones, was one of the things Moon liked best about the colony tree. The