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“Further than that.”
    “There were a few courts that went that far east. I thought they all failed and went back into the reaches, but maybe not.” Stone poked at the tinder thoughtfully. “This woman you call your mother. She was the reigning queen?”
    Moon eyed him. “No,” he said, slowly, not trying to conceal his opinion that this was a crazy question. “We lived in a tree.”
    Stone just looked annoyed. “What did she look like?”
    Does he think he knew her? Moon thought, incredulous. At least trying to see where this was going helped take his mind off the cold and his impending death. “Like me.” He remembered he was a groundling at the moment with a scale pattern under his skin, and clarified, “When she shifted, she was like my other... me. With wings. And she was dark brown, with red under her scales.”
    Stone shook his head, leaning over to untie the pack’s laces and rummage in it. “She wasn’t your mother.”
    Moon pressed his lips together to hold back his first knee-jerk response, then looked away. It was stupid to get into a pointless argument with someone who was planning to kill you.
    Stone pulled out a small cooking pot, battered but embossed with figures in a lighter metal around the rim. “Flighted females with those colors are warriors, and they can’t breed. Only queens and Arbora females are fertile.” Moon’s face must have reflected extreme doubt, because Stone added with a trace of exasperation, “Don’t look at me. We’re Raksura. That’s how it works.”
    Moon stared at the fire, trying to keep his expression noncommittal. He couldn’t tell if Stone really did believe that Moon was a Raksura, or if he was just trying to get his confidence. The first option made his skin creep. The second... at least made sense. He wants you to sit here, thinking nothing’s going to happen, until the poison wears off.
    Stone filled the pot from the waterskin and put it at the edge of the fire to warm. “This warrior, she didn’t say where you came from?”
    “No.”
    Stone’s gaze sharpened. “She didn’t tell you anything?”
    Moon folded his arms and looked away. Talking had been a bad idea.
    “She probably stole you.”
    Moon set his jaw. It’s not enough that he’s going to eat you; he’s got to insult your dead mother.
    With more heat, Stone added, “She didn’t even tell you how to reproduce, that’s—”
    That stung him to a reply. “I was a child. Reproducing wasn’t exactly a concern.”
    Stone watched him a moment, then turned to rummage in his pack again. “Oh, that young.” He pulled out a leather-wrapped packet. “There were four others? Younger than you?”
    Moon eyed him narrowly, not sure how Stone knew that. “Yes.”
    Stone heard his unspoken question. “It was a guess. There’s usually five in a clutch. They had wings?”
    “No.” Through the first long turns alone, finding places to shelter, hunting for food, trying not to become prey for something else, all Moon could think about was how much better it would have been if the others were still with him. The isolation had driven him to seek out groundling settlements—disastrously, at first. He had gotten better at that. He had thought he had gotten better at it. The events of the last day or so would suggest otherwise. He let out his breath in resignation. “Just me.”
    Stone nodded. He opened the leather packet, took out a dark cake of pressed tea, and scraped off a portion into the steaming water. “Raksura without wings are called Arbora. The females are fertile, and they can give birth to both Arbora and warriors.” He shook his head, admitting, “I don’t know how that works. A mentor explained it to me once but that was turns ago and it’s complicated. But Arbora are divided up into soldiers, hunters, and teachers. They take care of the colony, raise the children, find food, guard the ground.” He shrugged. “Run the place. They’re also mentors, but you have to be born with