The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells Page A

expectantly. Confused and wary, Moon asked, “What’s a consort?”
    Now everybody was looking at him as if he had said something crazy. Petal put a hand over her mouth. Chime’s jaw dropped.
    Flower bit her lip. “Yes, that’s what I was afraid of.” Hesitating, as if choosing her words carefully, she said, “A consort is a male warrior. A fertile male warrior, who can breed with a queen.”
    What? Moon shook his head. “But I’m not—”
    Flower nodded. “You are.”
    Moon kept shaking his head. “No. How could you possibly—”
    Anxiously, Chime put in, “Your scales are black. Only consorts are that color. You didn’t know? You really didn’t know that?”
    I really didn’t know, Moon thought blankly. I really didn’t know a lot of things. “But Stone is—” that color. Stone who had said he had children, grandchildren.
    Flower leaned forward, carefully explaining, “Stone is a consort. Or was, turns ago. Pearl, the reigning queen, is one of his line. Jade is her daughter, the only surviving queen from her last royal clutch.”
    “He didn’t tell me that,” Moon managed to say. He pushed to his feet, turned, and took a couple of long strides outside to the atrium, where the grass and plants were green under the wan cloudy daylight. He shifted and jumped straight up the wall.
    He caught the ledge above and climbed. Using the clinging vines and the cracks and chinks in the old stone to get up out of the atrium, he made it to the broad ledge of the next level.
    He needed more of a drop to clear the side of the pyramid, so he followed the ledge around to where it hung out over the river. A woman sat there, glumly surveying the water and the hilly gardens. Her scales were a soft but vivid blue, with a silver-gray pattern overlaying them like a web. Her wings were folded, and the frills and spines behind her head formed an elaborate mane, reaching all the way down her back to her tail. They flared out as she sat up, startled.
    “Sorry,” Moon muttered, and dove off the ledge.
    The sky threatened rain, though the air was warm and close. Moon flew upriver a short distance, far enough to get past the terraced gardens, but still in sight of the pyramid. The river was wider here, with pools all along the banks. A small stream trickled down from the hill, turning into a waterfall where it tumbled over the rocky bank and into a pool. Its edges were overhung by trees with broad leaves longer than Moon was tall, forming drooping curtains. He landed on a flat rock that jutted up from the shallow water, and shifted back to groundling to conserve his strength.
    He sat down and put his feet in the cool clear pool. This was his fault. He should have pushed Stone for more information, asked more questions, but it was another engrained habit from turns of hiding what he was. In most groundling societies he had lived in, if you asked questions, it was an invitation for others to ask questions back, necessitating more complicated lies. It was less dangerous just to listen and try to glean information that way. Idiot, he told himself again.
    Tiny little fish, blue-gray to blend in with the river bottom, came to investigate his feet. They scattered as Moon climbed down the rock and waded to the waterfall. He stood under the spray, hoping it would clear his head. It didn’t, but at least it washed several days worth of dust and grime out of his skin and hair and ragged clothes.
    He stepped out of the fall, shaking water out of his hair, and sensed movement above him. He squinted up to see a winged form against the gray sky. The scales were dark blue, the vivid color dimmed by the rain clouds.
    It didn’t surprise him that they had sent someone after him. That was part of the reason he had come out here, to see who they would send, and if they would come to talk or to try to drag him back. Moon wrung the water out of his shirt and watched as whoever it was spiraled down. As the figure drew closer, he realized it was an