be transferred to the devices that keep the leviathan from sinking below the surface or thrashing until it destroys the city. When I brought the seed here, the other magisters were only days away from losing what little control over the creature we have.” He spread his hands. “You must understand. Your people can find another place to live. Mine have no choice.”
Moon said, “We both know that’s not true.”
Ardan’s face went still, and a flush of heat darkened the blue skin of his cheeks and forehead.
Moon’s spines twitched. He had meant the traders’ ships, that the people here could leave the city if the magisters and the other wealthy residents bought the use of them for an evacuation. But that wasn’t what Ardan had heard. Jade was right. It wasn’t a coincidence that the leviathan had moved further out to sea. Ardan is controlling it.
Ardan said, thickly, “Then I’m glad we had this conversation.”
Then the floor dissolved under Moon’s feet, crumbling to dust. He dropped, shot his wings out to stop himself. Air rushed straight up from below and he caught it, played it across his wings to stay aloft. Several of Ardan’s men weren’t so lucky, and flailed as they tumbled down toward a great dark space below, along with fragments of the floor.
Moon couldn’t see what was down there, where the wind came from. The thick stench of the leviathan filled the air. Moon twisted enough to get a look behind him. The balcony had broken into a twisted mass of metal supports, and Stone clung to a post. River and Chime clung to him, and Esom clung to Chime. I’d tell Esom he was right, but I think he already knows, Moon thought, and looked back up at Ardan.
The Magister had gone to his knees, his face turned dull blue-gray by the terrible effort of destroying the floor.
The rush of air, the leviathan’s breathing, Moon thought suddenly. That wind came from the leviathan itself. There was some opening just below them, and in a moment it would— Moon flapped, tried to get out of the draft, shouted, “Stone, get away—”
The air reversed with a terrible suction as the creature inhaled. It dragged Moon down, tangled his wings. The pressure was terrible, irresistible. It dragged the air out of his lungs and made the edges of his vision go black. He flipped over in time to see it yank River and Chime away from their grip on Stone. Stone made a wild grab for them. The suction jerked him off the remnants of the balcony, shattered metal hurtling down after him.
Moon swore helplessly and used every bit of his remaining strength to wrench his wings in. The force of it rolled his body over again, so at least he could see what they were plunging into. He had the terrible feeling he already knew.
All he could see was a great dark space, then his eyes adjusted. It was a crater, a giant black crater in the back of the leviathan, surrounded by a ridge of scaly skin. An air hole, Moon thought, sick with dread, as they dropped helplessly down into it.
Chapter Fifteen
They fell, dragged down by the powerful suction of the leviathan’s breath. Moon couldn’t even struggle, the pressure so intense he couldn’t breathe. He thought his body would snap in half before he had a chance to smash into anything.
At first the darkness was complete. Then Moon caught flashes of blue light, just enough to show him that he was falling past a dark-gray surface ridged by scaly bone rings. He had a hard time believing this was really happening. He had always thought he would probably die by being eaten. Being inhaled by a leviathan wasn’t a fate he had considered.
Then he slammed into something ropy and semi-porous, bounced off it with stunning force, and tumbled through an opening in the surface.
Knocked nearly out of his wits, it took Moon moments to realize he was falling free into a huge open space lit by an eerie blue glow, that the pressure was gone. He spread his wings and cupped them to slow his headlong plunge.
Thick webs stretched from all sides of the big chamber and formed a shadowy, complicated architecture, as if he were surrounded by the towers and galleries of a near-transparent city. The moving lights were small bundles of blue-tinged phosphorescence, suspended on long poles and somehow attached to the heads of creatures like giant slugs that crawled ponderously over the heavy