The Siren Depths Read Free Page B

hoarse echo that sounded like Chime, then shouts from the Arbora. Then a tentacle whipped down and wrapped around his waist, and Moon stopped paying attention to anything else.
    It dragged him off the creature’s body, slammed him into the rotting moss, and started to squeeze. Stunned, Moon curled around it and sunk his teeth into the dense flesh. The creature must not have been expecting that much resistance because he felt its body jerk. The tentacle under him flailed and tried to slam him down again.
    Moon bit through a vein filled with some of the worst-tasting blood he had ever encountered, then felt another tentacle slap down and grab his leg. He had an instant to think, Oh, this is going to be bad . Then he heard a chorus of snarls and wingbeats as the rest of the warriors arrived in an angry rush.
    The tentacle flung Moon aside. He hit the ground hard and rolled, then staggered up to see tentacles flailing as the creature tried to flee. Warriors landed on the body, and several big Arbora leapt through the vines after it.
    Moon spat out blood, decided the others could finish the creature off, and started to tear through the crushed vines, looking for the warrior. He found the crumpled body a short distance away. It was Sand, a young warrior of Jade’s faction. He was unconscious, shifted to his groundling form, but still breathing.
    Chime crashed through the vines as Moon gently felt Sand’s ribs to see how bad the breaks were. His own chest hurt and his ribs ached, so he knew Sand had to be badly off.
    “You’re alive! He’s alive!” Chime shouted, waving to the Arbora who climbed out of the tunnel in the platform above. “Moon got Sand, and they’re both alive!”
    “Chime, Chime, take a breath,” Moon said, his voice coming out hoarse.
    Sand’s eyelids fluttered and he groaned, then gasped, “What happened?”
    “Nothing. We’ll tell you later.” Moon eased down into a sitting position. “Just lie still.” He asked Chime, “Were the Arbora all right?”
    Chime nodded, stepping through the crushed vines to crouch next to Sand. “Three of them are hurt, but nobody’s dead.” He touched Sand’s forehead and frowned in concentration. Watching his face, Moon saw the moment when he remembered again that he wasn’t a mentor and couldn’t put Sand in a healing trance. Chime winced and drew his hand back, and Moon looked away.
    After a moment, Chime said, “I hate hunting.”
    * * *
    Nobody had been eaten, so Moon was counting it as a pretty good day. The warriors transported the wounded, the Arbora, and their kills to the colony. Moon went back with the first group. He managed to slip away from the storm of exclamations, explanations, and recriminations that immediately erupted in the greeting hall and flew up the central well to the queens’ level.
    No one was out in the queens’ hall, which was a relief. It was a big chamber, the far side looking out into the colony tree’s central well, with the open gallery of the consort level above it. There was a fountain against the inner wall, falling down into a shallow pool, and above it a huge sculpture of a queen. Her outspread wings stretched out across the walls to circle the entire hall, finally meeting tip to tip. Her scales, set with polished sunstones, glinted faintly in the soft light of shells mounted on the walls that were spelled to glow. He heard muted conversation from the direction of Pearl’s bower and quickly took the passage that led into Jade’s.
    At first, Jade hadn’t wanted to move up here, feeling that the bower near the teachers’ hall that she and Moon had shared when they first arrived was more convenient. But when visitors from other courts started to appear, it would look as if Indigo Cloud was far worse off than it actually was if the royal bowers were empty. These chambers held what Moon thought was some of the best carving in the colony and had their own hot bathing pool.
    The heating stones in the metal bowl hearth