by Fran Wilde
Then the shadow passed beyond the smoke and disappeared. I felt full sunlight on my face, while a different heat pulsed around me.
“Move!” I heard Wik shout again. He was grappling with a guard, and the guard was winning, pinning him down.
The plinth burned and crumbled around us as the sun shone down, uncaring. More councilors began to reach the plinth’s edges and to jump. Many tangled and fell: wings and arms and kicking feet.
A silk-wrapped foot hit my arm. A hand clawed the air above my head. I’d leapt without realizing it.
A roar of flames beating against silk and fiber nearly deafened me. The elder Singer who had laughed at Kirit fell past, his fingers reaching, grabbing. He touched the edge of my robe, then gravity pulled him free.
I fought the heated wind, trying to stay aloft. Too close and my wings would catch. Too far and I wouldn’t be able to help. I searched for a way to assist, remembering Ezarit’s dive for me.
In the distance, the fledges and my family landed on Varu’s towertop. They were safe.
I dove into the smoke.
In the choking, screaming air of the platform, Wik tried to help people fly away, instead of throwing them down. Even as he, himself, remained wingless and exposed.
I tried to reach him. The platform tether to Naza began to burn.
A hot gust blew me sideways, towards Varu. I could not find Doran. Nor Vant.
More blackwings appeared, flying to the nearby towers and onto the plinth. Two lifted Wik and flew away. More followed, carrying their own burdens.
One came at me, arms reaching, but Ezarit shot between us, knocking the wind from the black foils and sending her tumbling. “Fly, Nat!” She dove then, her own wings locked, a gray-winged attacker behind her. A knife gleamed in her hand.
The plinth ripped into three flaming pieces and spilled its contents to the sky. I flew through the smoke as the city council’s plinth fell into the space between the towers and tumbled, a flaming sun, towards the clouds.
I dove after it, and the people who were falling with it, my arms out, reaching.
PART TWO
STOLEN
Black kaviks, dodging heated air, flew a wide circuit around thick columns of smoke. They rasped at the shadows below, the struggling shapes fading from gray to white, but could not aid the fallen or the lost. The messengers landed on ash-streaked towers that bore the living through the air.
FORTIFY
Tower by tower, secure yourselves,
Except in city’s dire need.
13
ASH AND MIST
Gray smoke tendrils wove through white clouds. Thick mist parted before me as I dove through hot air; ash tangled my hair, pushed into my lungs, darkened my tucked wings. I descended, resolving that those I could reach would not fall, searching for a place where the air cleared and I could breathe. Around me, shreds of silk and fiber drifted feather-light and fire-bright.
The smoke left traces on my skin like dark tears.
Below me spun a councilor from Haim, half-winged and flailing. He called for help. Shouts filled the wind, my ears.
Reaching, my hands caught his, and I arched my back, heading for the strongest draft swirling the smoke. The councilor kicked the air, trying to climb, dragging me down. I fought for wind and lift, but met only smoke and weight. To continue meant falling from the sky, from my family. I had to let go.
I peeled my fingers from his arm and slowly his grip tore from my wrist, breaking skin in his desperation. His screams wrapped around me, tore at my ears until I heard nothing else, long after the councilor had disappeared from view.
A hole in the mist slowly sealed, his passage erased, save for a ragged headache that would not disappear so easily. Circling up, my eyes burned, red from smoke.
The sky above cleared of attackers.
I dove again, deeper. Shadows spun below; the falling had passed me. They merged with the dark forms of towers, and I altered course, trying to avoid a sudden stop at the junction of wind and bone.
On a bone spur off my left wing, a figure gestured as if trying to brush the air away. I turned, built up speed, and passed above the spur. Grabbed a handful of robe, an arm. I kicked hard against the wind and caught a better draft. The person I held moaned, but did not struggle. I circled higher, shouting with relief.
I had a terrible grip on them, all angles and pain, and I couldn’t see their face, covered as it was by part of their gray robe. Dark stains dappled the fabric. Blood. A Lawsmarker swung from their shoulder, near holes where others had torn free. A Singer, plucked from the smoke-filled mist while the council fell. A person, who’d fallen when the platform was attacked.
I fought my way up, aiming for Varu and searching for each strong gust that would carry me into the light, away from the sifting ash. Skyblessed luck let my wings remain unscorched and whole.
Doubled shadows passed above me, other rescuers, with those they could save.
An updraft carried me above the heated air, the wind strong around Varu—its profile lower than the towers around it a result of previous failed rebellion against the Singers. My arms and shoulders ached from grappling the Singer.
Only when I landed on Varu’s slim tenth-tier balcony did I turn to look out at the space between Narath and Naza, where the city council’s flags had played the breeze.
The attackers and their skymouth-floated, sky-cloaked platform had disappeared. Once again, the blue horizon held no gray wings, no Singer cloaks. Only blackwings circled the nearer towers. Several clustered around Varu.
A faint pall hung in the empty air where the council had stood moments before. The wind dispersed the smoke, bled it bright-edged into the clouds.
* * *
On the crowded Varu balcony, bone pots held struggling stone fruit trees. A dazed part of my mind wondered at this: the tier was too low and faced the wrong direction for stone fruit. The rest of me scrambled to save a life.
An empty whipperling cage sat on a low table. I pushed both aside and laid the Singer gently on the balcony floor. Blood-matted hair, mottling Amrath tower marks wound through amber and silver-streaked braids. The Singer had been trying to fit in with their host tower.
I bent and put two fingers against the ash-dark skin of their wrist. Felt a jumpy pulse. Watched their eyelids flutter. Open to pain-clouded eyes.
“Nat,” the Singer whispered. They knew me. Viridi. Her tattoos highlighted the pallor of her skin, etched in silver.
“Help!” I shouted to the tier. “Someone help!” The wind swirled my words.
Her robes were burned in several places. When she rolled on her right side to vomit, I could see leathery, blistered skin through the holes in her robes. A gash over her ear. The burns smelled of rot gas.
“Shhh,” I said, trying to comfort her. Swallowing hard to avoid throwing up myself. “Shhh. Someone will come.” I tore a piece of her robe and pressed it as gently as I could to the wound on her head.
She was shivering. She wouldn’t last long in the cold air.
“Councilor,” she whispered when she finished retching. She stretched a hand towards my satchel.
“I have no water, Viridi. I wish I did.” Blood oozed through the fabric of her robe onto my fingers, dark and sticky.
She pushed at my arm. “The codex page, Conclave? Wik said you found it. Do you have it still?” Each word cost her.
I couldn’t lie to someone who might die. “I do.”
“Break it. Now.” She closed her eyes. Her fingers waved at my satchel.
Break it? After the trouble Kirit and I went through to get it? No—she was right: Doran would use the page to support another Conclave with the surviving Singers, if he could. Viridi was right.
I took her hand and put it over the cut on the side of her head. “Keep pressure, here.” Then, remembering Kirit sorting through the Spire rubble, I pulled the thick bone page from the bag and readied to throw it over the tier’s edge.
“No.” Viridi groaned, trying
to get my attention. “Someone could find it. Might use the Conclave count against us. Smash it.”
Her injuries had rendered her incoherent. No help had arrived, and the tier was silent. She stared at me, her eyes demanding I act. So I stepped back and slammed the tablet into the tier, as far from her as possible. Maybe the noise would get us attention from the tower.
The Conclave page cracked into one large piece and several smaller ones. Between the bone pieces, brass gleamed, looking nearly new. I glimpsed etching, like the other plate in my bag. More detailed than my father’s drawings had ever been. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” Viridi whispered. Her pupils had dilated, she no longer focused on me. “A ghost. A story.”
A clatter of wing battens made me jump and scoop up the bone shards and what they contained. I shoved all of it in my satchel as Hiroli landed close beside me, carrying Moc tight against her chest. Hiroli’s wings were seared in places, but still held. Moc’s were torn. Nearly gone.
I touched the boy’s shoulder gently. “Ciel is above, on the towertop. I saw her. Safe.” I held his gaze and repeated myself. “Safe with my family.”
Moc took a deep breath and stared at me, then slowly blinked. Nodded that he understood. Then he saw Viridi. He pulled from my grip and went to her.
“Ezarit? Doran? The other Singers?” I asked Hiroli. Speaking made me cough, and once I started, I couldn’t stop.
“You need water,” Hiroli said. She turned and shouted, “Varu, help!”
No answer on the empty balcony. Varu had been under the Spire’s interdictions so often, any sign of Singers probably terrified them. Especially the lowtower.
“I’m all right.” I sounded like I’d been chewing bone. Worse than Kirit’s voice ever had. I really wasn’t all right. My chest hurt, and I didn’t want to take too deep a breath for fear of coughing again. But I wouldn’t look weak in front of Hiroli.
“We need aid!” she shouted again.
The balcony remained silent. Beyond the stone fruit pots, the tier was shuttered. I’d been so focused on Viridi, I hadn’t seen it. They’d barricaded as if for a skymouth migration.
Hiroli beat on the shutters, but no one answered.
“Cowards,” she said.
“Tower by tower, secure yourselves,” I whisper-sang. Each word carved pain on my seared lungs. I’d once hid behind shutters myself. When skymouths attacked, warnings arrived by kavik that made all the tiers close themselves away for safety. Varu was remarkably quiet; as if the fighting had scared them inside.
I looked back towards the sky, seeking help. Panic and fear mixed with anger. I tasted smoke, spit ash. Cowards indeed.
Hiroli pulled me from the exposed balcony, behind a tangle of garden vines. “Look,” she pointed. Blackwings circled through the towers, spreading out through the city like dark birds. Their wings matched the pair Hiroli wore. “The guards are helping.”
Not very likely blackwing guards would help Singers, even ones we’d pulled from the clouds.
“I hope so,” I said lightly, but I moved to guard Viridi as best I could. She was a Singer, and Hiroli wore black wings. Could I protect Moc at the same time? “What do you intend?”
Hiroli held up both hands. “I’m a councilor. I am Ezarit’s apprentice. My tower makes the black dye, that’s all. I mean these two no harm. They didn’t attack us.” She held her hand palm up, as if to cup the clearing sky, “But there were Singers in the sky!”
At Viridi’s side, Moc pressed the sodden cloth to her wound. I heard a few snatches of song and whispers. Don’t die, Viridi. “Where did they come from? Not many Singers—at least not the leaders—are left.” The fledges, yes, and several older acolytes. They’d been spared from this morning’s Conclave and were still at their quarters, hopefully.
Hiroli rubbed her forehead and spoke in a low tone, as if hoping Moc couldn’t hear her. “There seemed to be enough to commit war and Treason, both.”
“I’m not certain—” I began. “I saw one of the attackers’ faces. No tattoos.”
She shook her head. “They could have been covered up. Besides, not all Singers have marks. Macal doesn’t.” She was certain.
“But council confiscated all the gray wings a moon ago. Where did they get the wings?”
Hiroli narrowed her eyes, as if trying to remember what she’d seen. “If a tower is using Singer clothing and Singer weapons to wage war? Everyone must know so they can protect themselves.”
Dix had access to the gas they’d used as weapons, as well as the floating platform. I didn’t know where the wings were stored, but if it was at Grigrit, she had access to those too. Ezarit’s words: That one has been dangerous since the Singers rejected her when we were fledges. She’s so conflicted.
Who’d attacked us was not yet clear, but one thing was: The Rise warned of war. We were closer to it than ever.
City of my father and mother, ancient ever-rising city of towers and sky. City I’d flown to defend. Now wounded. Now broken.
A fresh gust of wind blew smoke and stench towards us, shouts and whistles too. A fresh crew of guards and volunteers were searching the towers for the fallen. These searchers didn’t risk the clouds, but they scoured the lowtowers right to the cloudtop for survivors.
“The protesters,” I said. “The councilors?” I’d seen my family safely landing on the Varu towertop, but who else survived? Who hadn’t?
Hiroli shook her head. She knew no more than I did.
My headache grew.
Moc began keening as Viridi struggled and gasped for air. “She was good. She tried to help.” He wept as he stroked her hair, hand as gentle as a breeze on a bird’s wing.
“Varu, aid!” I shouted once more. Where were they?
Over the balcony edge, a guard spiraled lower, looking to pass nearby. The longer we remained on this balcony, the more exposed Viridi was. I banged once more on the shutters. Heard movement behind. Something being dragged to brace the shutter. I began to yell in frustration, borderless words that died in my throat.
I needed assistance, but could not afford to attract the roving blackwings’ attention. “We need to go up,” I said. “A tier with water. And medicine.” Closer to the blackwings, perhaps, but on the towertop, we would find people who were not afraid.
My family was at the top of Varu. Could we make it there? Could Viridi?
A blackwing flew near Varu, just above us. I pushed Moc among the planters and pots and tried to hide Viridi in my shadow. Through the shutters at my back, I heard whispering.
A kavik landed on the balcony and opened its beak to caw. Hiroli reached into her robe and found a piece of graincake. Fed the dark-winged bird until it allowed her to brush ash from its head. Then she gently lifted the chips tied to the bird’s foot before it could signal to the tier’s residents that there was a message.
“The towers must remain Fortified for safety,” Hiroli read. “Blackwings hunt traitors who have twice tried to destroy the city, once with skymouths and now with fire.” She looked from Moc and Viridi to me.
“The Council, or what’s left of it, is hunting Singers.” The words chilled me, though I’d expected it. Kirit was still out there, somewhere. They had Wik. And I’d left Ciel with my family atop Varu.
Give this tier enough time, I realized, and they’ll trade Viridi and Moc to the blackwings in order to gain favor for themselves. “We have to leave.” I no longer cared where.
Had the attackers been Singers? Not a chance.
Hiroli shook her head. She lifted the skein in her hands. “And”—she pointed to familiar sigils on the chips—“they seek anyone who supported the Singers as well. Ezarit, Kirit, the protesters. Us.”
Even as the smoke cleared and guards searched for survivors, the city had begun hunting its own.
14
REMEMBRANCE
Heartbeats counted loud time on the quiet tier. I grabbed for the kavik to see the message for myself. The bird was large, and when it op
ened its wings in panic at my approaching hands, it seemed for a moment to block the sky. A rude bird. But it didn’t take flight. It snapped its beak at me, a stranger with no food. Tilted its head. Cackled.
So different than Maalik. Who was safe, I hoped. Beliak had sent him to the protesters. To Ceetcee, I knew now. Maalik knew her by sight. And Ceetcee was safe.
But I wondered at this kavik. “It doesn’t know me.” Kaviks of the same quadrant knew almost everyone. Like whipperlings, kaviks remembered faces. They seemed to share information among themselves as well: who carried food, who threw bone chips at them. There were no strangers. We were in the northwest, barely. “I’ve flown this quadrant since I was a fledge. Why does this kavik not know me?”
Hiroli shook her head. She didn’t know. She’d woven a few glass beads into her dark hair, like Ezarit. They sparkled cheerfully in the light, but her face was smudged and scraped. “Sent from the south, maybe?” She bundled up the message skein so Moc could not see that he was named, and flapped her hand at the bird until it flew away. “The messages blame the Singers for Spirefall and for this attack, both. They sound sure of it. But I think the surviving council needs to know what you saw.”
Hiroli was already tightening her wingstraps. “We’ll go up to Ezarit’s tier, uptower. She’ll stop this.”
Ezarit hasn’t been able to stop anything, not for a long time. Not even a vote within her own council.
Viridi groaned; the side where she’d been snared by the bone spur oozed dark blood.
“I don’t think she’ll fly well,” I said.
“Then you have to leave her.” Hiroli didn’t flinch at the thought. She was accustomed to obeying Fortify: towers must secure themselves, and people too.
But the Law didn’t end there. Except in city’s dire need. This certainly qualified.
“I won’t leave her. This tier would turn her in or let her die alone. She doesn’t deserve that.” As Moc watched with wide eyes, I bent to whisper to the Singer, knowing these might be the last words she heard. “Risen, we must move again. You’re injured. If you choose to go with us, I regret any suffering this causes you.”
