The Siren Depths Read Online Free PDF Page B

it?”
    Heart looked up at him. She still smelled of fresh Raksuran blood; when she had shifted to groundling the blood staining her claws had transferred to her fingernails. “The augury…There was something about you. Oh, nothing terrible. It was just that your blood was woven all through the part of the design that indicated an upheaval.”
    That…doesn’t sound good. Moon extended his senses, making sure no one was in earshot. He could hear movement and voices in the balcony passages above, but no one seemed to be paying attention to them. He lowered his voice anyway. “What does that mean?”
    Heart hesitated. “I think it means that your interest will part from the interest of the court. For a time, anyway. I’m not certain.” Her gaze was worried. “You weren’t…planning to leave, were you?”
    That took Moon by surprise. “No. Why would I?”
    “Sorry, it’s just—That’s what it looked like.” She shook her head in frustration. “It’s very hard to interpret individual strands in general auguries; Flower always thought it was a mistake to try. And this was an unusual augury anyway, with that intrusion about the watcher.”
    “Why didn’t you say anything about it to the others?” Then it occurred to Moon that she might be about to, that she might have wanted to warn him first.
    “It was a personal augury, not one for the court. And…I thought it would just make trouble for you. There was nothing in the augury that indicated danger for the court.” Heart smiled a little wryly. “I don’t want to upset anyone over a minor issue, like a disagreement over something the court will do.”
    That was a relief. “Thank you for…telling me.” He had almost said warning me .
    “As I said, it’s probably nothing,” Heart told him and slipped away. Moon wished she didn’t sound quite so much as though she was trying to convince herself.
    Lost in thought, he started across the chamber. Then a warrior came off a balcony somewhere above in an uncontrolled tumble and landed in front of him. Moon stopped abruptly and shifted by instinct. “Sorry,” the warrior gasped in contrition, sprawled on the floor and looking up at Moon. It was Coil, who was one of Pearl’s younger warriors, though Moon didn’t know him well. “They threw me off the—”
    Two more warriors landed nearby, and one pounced forward to pin Coil down. From Coil’s expression of mingled embarrassment and fear, this wasn’t play, at least for him. Annoyed, Moon said, “Get off him.”
    The warrior looked up, baring his teeth. It was Band, another member of Pearl’s faction. The one who was looking on with a grin was Fair, his clutchmate. Band said, “Why? We’re just having fun.”
    A disproportionate amount of the trouble Moon had had in the court came from the younger male warriors. The female warriors and the older males always seemed able to find unobjectionable ways to spend their free time; the younger males couldn’t manage to.
    It also didn’t help that Moon had discovered early on that his patience for being argued with by young male warriors was close to nonexistent. Band’s mocking grin was too much to bear. Moon grabbed Band by the throat and threw him.
    Band landed about twenty paces away, sliding across the smooth polished wood of the floor. Coil seized his chance, skittering out of reach. But Fair surged forward and stopped a bare pace away. He had been one of those trapped and wounded during the Fell attack on the old colony, so he would have missed the battle to free the court and other events that might have convinced him that Moon was not exactly a safe or easy target. He snarled, “I wonder how tough you are without a queen to defend you, solitary.”
    Moon stepped forward, closing the distance between them. He said, deceptively calm, “My queen’s not here. Stop wondering.” He had gotten used to having the solitary accusation thrown in his face during almost every disagreement, but he still felt