Cloudbound

by Fran Wilde

  Clouds chewed at the moonbeam and a scrim of mist obscured the plinth. The nearest skymouth skins seemed to shimmer blue-silver with reflected light. I could see them easier now.

  Two fledges worked at the plinth’s edge closest to the bone tower. Now and then, one of them knelt or lay down. A larger figure stood watch.

  I strained my eyes, counting. Waiting. Four children worked the plinth.

  Their guard focused attention on the Spire wall, and the work the fledges were doing there. The smell came again, close enough to be sickening. Foul air surrounded the plinth, the skymouth hides. I could see the sharp objects that the children had pushed into the bone tower’s overgrown core as the plinth circled. Dark, moonlit liquid dripped from the resulting holes into goose bladders and bone buckets.

  Flattened against the Spire, I remained unseen. I rested in a shallow divot, a sealed-over Spire gate from long ago.

  The child workers attached spigots and buckets to the holes they’d made. They pulled other buckets and taps from holes that no longer dripped. The plinth continued to circle, slowly, as a guard struggled with the large wings to guide its turn.

  Looking up, I saw a glow above the fledges still working the taps that quickly faded and went out. The clouds parted and a moonbeam caught on two metal assemblages connecting tower and plinth. I could barely make out the tendons that had been stretched between them. They looked like work my father might have done once—a mechanism that kept the plinth circling close to the tower.

  Ceetcee and the other artifexes used similar but simpler tools to help them build bridges between the towers. But someone had modified this construction. Someone who understood tools. Another artifex.

  The plinth made a turn, two large silk wingfoils swinging out with the same speed as windbeaters’ giant wings had worked to churn up the Gyre.

  Five more windbeaters’ wings hung from the Spire, above the plinth, at the end of the bone and metal outcropping. The expanse of it stretched down the Spire’s side, and bolts had been driven far enough through the bone wall that dark liquid seeped down the bone, pooling in old carvings.

  Five foils, arrayed in a circle. Enough to spin a Gyre of its own, or the reverse of one. If someone could get it moving fast enough, they might make a hole in the wind. A hole big enough for a flier to fall through. I clutched the message chip on the blue silk cord at my wrist. Felt its solidity, its realness. This happened. This was happening.

  I hadn’t imagined the shadows. Nor the missing wind. I hadn’t imagined the nets. I was neither dead nor skytouched.

  Using handholds and the tier’s narrow ledge, I followed the slowly orbiting platform as far as I could, until I came to another gate. This one half open.

  A shadow passed between me and the moonlight, a flier descending fast, and before I could worry about rodents or what else might be behind the gate, I pressed myself into the crack.

  The plinth below me dipped, then rose.

  A familiar voice broke the night below me, not bothering with whispers. “You are working too slow. The city needs you to work faster.”

  I knew that voice. I’d heard it that very morning Councilor Densira … Hello Kirit. Dix. Talking to the small figures on the plinth as if they were garbage.

  Another black-winged guard approached the plinth and whistled. Pulled a spindle from a satchel and attached it to skymouth-hide tethers.

  “It’s time,” Dix said. The fledges hoisted more silk foils onto the spindle’s sides. The guard extended it up with the turn of a crank and connected with the array on the arm attached to the Spire. The fledges, with Dix shouting at them, pulled hard at the spindle and set it spinning like a top. Fast. Then faster. The giant array whirled above their heads.

  Wind buffeted my ears as the sky screamed open.

  Small bugs and birds rained down, hitting the Spire wall and the platform beneath me.

  A new set of child-sized wings plummeted from the sky, past the plinth. The second blackwing dove after them and moments later, dropped a freshly sky-plucked and struggling fledge onto the plinth.

  The guard shouted, “Flying at night is forbidden, fledge.”

  Dix lifted another, small, wingless fledge by the arms up and over the plinth’s edge. “You are unlucky today. The city can only feed hard workers. You see how easy it is to replace you,” she said, her voice loud enough to be heard clearly. The fledge’s legs kicked once, twice. Dix let go and the fledge fell, into the dark. I forced myself to stay on the wall, though every muscle jumped forward when the fledge fell, wanting to go after it. I needed to stay and watch. My gut ached with the choice.

  The plinth groaned against the leash that bound it to the tower’s girth. The blackwing split the evening’s silence with a barking laugh.

  Dix spoke again. “Eat.”

  There was little dissent from the children this time. The plinth rolled with footfalls. I could hear whispering. “It tastes bad.”

  “Just eat it. Who knows when we’ll get more.”

  “I feel sick. I want to go home.”

  “Shh. They hear you, they’ll do more than throw away your wings.”

  Silence.

  I touched the knife sheathed on my left arm. I couldn’t cut the plinth the way I’d cut the net. Everyone aboard would fall, and I didn’t have any way to catch them.

  “I wish we could go back up.”

  “Won’t be long, fledge. This tier’s almost tapped out.” Dix again, her voice firm. Down here, she was in charge. But in charge of what? And the tier was almost tapped of what?

  Liquid dripped from the Spire’s taps in a soft rhythm—drip drop, drip drop. Again, the thick smell hit me and disappeared. I remembered where I’d met that smell before: when Kirit had revealed the cutaway in the Spire. The heartbone.

  Shock made me reel, and I clutched at the wall. The children were draining heartbone from the Spire, at Dix’s command.

  The Spire wasn’t dying. Dix was killing it. Now I knew.

  Dix and her cohort endangered all those in the towers: this was Treason against the city. The greatest of crimes. While the council above planned a new era, with great advancements, the city was being fatally weakened from below. And no one knew.

  No, that was wrong; some had to know. Whoever created this, whoever allowed it.

  Now everyone needed to know.

  I had to speak. To tell the council. The city.

  The lanterns on the platform above were extinguished, leaving only moonlight to cut the darkness. An adult spoke in stern tones. “Sleep. Don’t roll off the edge. If you do, you’ll have to hang there until I come to untie you.”

  Then silk whispered over battens, a wingset unfurling. Two dark-winged fliers dipped off the plinth and circled to find a gust. I pressed back into the windgate, hiding, hoping my cloak concealed me enough in the darkness and clouds.

  Dix passed close by, but still well below me. The Spire’s remains hid me well. I saw the tower marks woven, southern-style, in her hair as she swept around the tower’s side to begin the climb up through the cloudtop.

  A scree of mist obscured the plinth below, and I dropped closer, nearly reaching the end of the rope Beliak had given me. The clouds parted, and the moon brushed the platform, its skymouth husks, and its occupants with silver.

  On the plinth below, I made out a shock of brass-colored hair. Moc. Beside him, an arm curled protectively around his shoulders, sat his twin, Ciel.

  Though I scanned the platform and the Spire around it, taking in the mechanisms, the fledges, and the guard, my eyes couldn’t find what wasn’t there. There was no sign of Kirit anywhere.

  7

  ESCAPE

  The platform below me continued its slow circuit while the fledges huddled in half darkness. Beneath their feet, only a thin span of fiber and silk kept them from being lost in the clouds. When I got close enough, I could see the pale creases in Moc’s robe where his wingstraps had recently pressed, but the wingset itself was nowhere to be seen. None of th
e fledges wore wings.

  The risk of it took me a moment to comprehend. My own complicity took longer to weigh on me.

  Above the clouds, I’d figured the missing Singer fledges for runaways, another council headache. I’d shared my assumptions in reports, and the fledges had been written off. But at least some of those fledges were here. Dix had brought them below the clouds, conscripted them, and taken their wings, while the council and the towers remained unaware. Cold disgust curled in the pit of my stomach. Everyone thought the fledges had run away and were hiding somewhere, because I’d told them so.

  Even Ciel, who I’d assumed safe on another tower, had been missing for days. If the city was a family, we’d let some of our youngest charges fall. All of us but Kirit.

  Now the fledges I’d called runaways curled on the plinth below me. My hand went to my knife, thinking to cut their tethers. And then what? They couldn’t fly. They looked too tired to attempt—wingless—an ascent of the Spire. And if we were caught? We’d all be thrown down.

  To leave them here any longer was unthinkable too. Kirit wouldn’t leave them. I couldn’t either. But Maalik was gone, taking our message to Varu. I could not send for help. I had my knife, my bow, and a handful of pitons. Some rope. No arrows.

  No hunter worth their wings would find themselves in a situation like this. No city leader either. I wasn’t prepared. But I’d survived worse.

  I squared my shoulders, feeling the wingstraps dig in. Pulled my hood low to shadow my face. Began to work my way down the Spire’s grips and footholds. I’d bring them back to safety, and then the city would hear what they knew, and what I knew now: that Dix committed Treason.

  First, I needed to take care of the guard.

  He stood at the plinth edge, a boy several years younger than me. Black wings, wingmark still tied to his left shoulder. Since no one knew what took place here, his main task was to guard the fledges; his gaze was focused on them, not the Spire above.

  I’d blended with the Spire’s mossy walls on the lee side while I inched closer, my muscles aching from the tight grips and footholds. When I was close enough, I pushed away from the wall and flipped, a perfect arc. I tackled the guard and pushed him into the platform’s thick hide. The guard yelled, but I pressed his face to the fabric. He struggled against my weight. Several fledges watched us, but didn’t move. I grabbed at the rope I’d carried since the Spire, but I needed more hands to bind the guard. More rope too.

  “Help me!” I whistled, trying to get Moc’s attention, or Ciel’s. Why weren’t they moving? Their brassy-haired heads lifted, eyes scanning the darkness. I stuffed the guard’s hood into his mouth and put my knee into his back. Gestured urgently at the fledges. “Moc! Ciel!”

  So slowly I could almost feel the moon age above us, Moc’s eyes focused on me. “Nat.” His voice was dull. Ciel left his side and scrambled across the platform. She took the rope from my hands and tightened it around the guard’s wrists. The guard groaned and struggled, but I kept him pinned.

  “Get his feet too. What’s wrong with the others?”

  The girl looked exhausted, her hair greasy, her skin nearly gray. “They’re not feeding us much,” she said. “Just this. I throw mine away, mostly.” She held out a square of what looked like rendered goose fat, only thicker and the wrong color. It stank like the Spire had.

  Even as the guard struggled against my weight, I tried to comprehend. “They’re feeding you heartbone?” I stared into the fledges’ dulled eyes. Was this a drug? We were worse off than I’d thought—drugged, wingless fledges couldn’t possibly attempt a climb, or be much help to me at all. Only Ciel seemed able enough to help.

  She bound the guard’s feet and released the straps of his wings. I pulled his wingset off, and without it, the bound guard froze, fearful of rolling off the plinth in his struggle.

  “Throwing him to the clouds would be faster,” Ciel spoke, but she hesitated, unwilling to do it. After seeing Dix throw fledges down, and after falling so far myself—twice now— I knew that would never be my way.

  “Ciel, how long do they leave you to sleep?” We had little time to figure out how to escape.

  We had rope and nets, two pairs of wings—mine and the guard’s—both too big for any of the fledges. And we had a prisoner.

  “Ciel, we need to go up. Fast.” I shook her gently.

  Tears glossed Ciel’s eyes. “I figured no one was looking for us. A bunch of Singer fledges.”

  “How long, Ciel?” The fledge had been through so much. How much could she help in this state? But she straightened and looked up.

  “When it gets brighter, they’ll be back. We put the buckets on the pulleys then.” She pointed to the pulley ropes. “And they go up full, then come back down empty for us to fill again. In the morning, blackwing guards bring food down here, then take bigger sacks away from the gate up there. Those float.”

  “They float. Like rot gas?”

  Ciel nodded and pointed. Above us, the silver outlines of four skymouth husks, filled and floating held the platform aloft. “Like that.”

  Connections began to light in my mind like oil lamps in the towers. Mining heartbone; sending it higher; gas being removed from an alcove; the Spire dying. Someone was preparing for battle, making rot gas, using the excess for lift. At the moment, who didn’t matter, although I knew Dix was involved. “I think I have a way to get us out of here.”

  I’d thought the fledges were running away. That once the Singers were cut from our culture, the city would be safer. My father’s message chip swung from my wrist, its careful carvings deepened with moonlight in the Spire’s shadow. He’d seen the truth of things, where I’d leapt to conclusions. I regretted my assumptions and wished Naton could see what I saw now, and help me understand it.

  Liras had said we were on the verge of a new age. New discoveries. Whatever this gas was, it was new too. And it might be more treasonous and terrible than the old ways. But it was going to get us out of here.

  I eyed the tethers that attached the skymouth husks to the platform. Without them, the platform would collapse, the heartbone and the fledges would spill into the clouds. But the metal pulleys that allowed the platform to circuit the Spire without pulling away? Those were a different story.

  Ciel saw where I looked. “We tried to loose the platform, but we couldn’t get the knots undone.”

  The only way we were going anywhere was on this platform. If we untethered it from the Spire, it would rise. But we had to rise fast. “Dump everything over the sides you can. The booms, most of the nets.” I led the way. The booms struck the side of the Spire and bounced into the darkness. I was about to toss the windbeaters’ wings down too, when Ciel touched my arm.

  “Wait. We can use those, I think.” She rowed the air beside us with one and the platform jerked against its bindings.

  “Tether Moc well,” I told her while I threw all but one of the buckets over. “All the fledges are too woozy to help.” She bound one other fledge to the plinth, and grabbed another set of windbeaters’ wings, handing them to a third fledge who came to help. The two positioned themselves at the back of the plinth as I stepped close to the Spire wall and began untying the cams.

  With one tether loose, the platform lifted precariously.

  I waved for help. “Hurry, get the other side!”

  Ciel dropped her foils fast as the platform lurched and skewed. She and I both tugged at the rope and metal until it snapped away. The platform began to drift up the Spire’s side, an edge dragging noisily towards the gate above, and the bone and wire construction beyond.

  I should have thought more about how to steer the platform before I cut the tethers. But Ciel already had an idea.

  “Help me now!” Ciel held windbeaters’ wing battens against the Spire, trying to fend us off the wall. She was too small to make much difference. I grabbed another large wingfoil and pushed too.

  We rose, the skymouth husks bobbing overhead. It was still dark. We still had a
chance to get away before the black-winged guards came with the fledges’ breakfast. When we’d climbed three tiers, we passed the alcove. It was an old Gyre tunnel, the gate stuck open, crusted with bone growth.

  Inside, metal gleamed in firelight. A row of pots bubbled over low fires, and above those, gas collected in upended bladders. A young man stumbled to the gate entrance. He moved towards the bone horn hung by the gate, but I leaned far out from the plinth and plucked the horn from its hook. Threw it into the clouds.

  Then I grabbed at his robe. My fingers struck a hard surface beneath. Bone armor? He took two steps back and stared at me, at the platform, as we slowly moved past him. His mouth hung open, but he made no sound. His eyes looked like Moc’s. Stunned. Drugged.

  “That’s the artifex,” Ciel said, “who takes the heartbone from us and makes the floats.”

  Above, the bone outcropping loomed. We were going to run right into it. We needed to move. But we had too much drag to push ourselves sideways with only the windbeaters’ foils.

  “Quick, the guard.” Ciel convinced another fledge wobbling in a half-drugged haze to help her shove the bound guard from the plinth down to the tier. He landed with a thump at the artifex’s feet.

  We began to move faster. Now we had more maneuverability, but less time to get away from the outcropping. Ciel and I pushed hard on the wings until we rowed ourselves downwind of the hazard. Ciel sat back on the platform, relieved, but I felt the danger more now.

  Floating this way, we moved higher without having to circle on the wind or rely on a gust. But morning was coming. Soon Dix or her guards would return and find us creeping up the Spire on her stolen platform. We needed horizontal momentum too.

  I shook the nearest fledges, pointed. “Best if we could go straight across the gap between the towers, to Bissel.” Across the open sky. “We have to row really hard. All together.”

  “I have a better idea,” Ciel said. “But you’re not going to like it.” She handed me a rope that had been used to weave netting.

  I held the spidersilk tether in my hands. So much stronger than the ropes Kirit and I had used in the Gyre a day before. Was it only a day? Two?