Cloudbound

by Fran Wilde

  “I am tired, Councilor,” she slurred, her eyes still closed. So soft was her speech, I wondered if I imagined her words.

  “We’ll go up,” I decided. To the towertop. Eight tiers, maybe. There might be medicine up there. Water.

  I lifted her again in my arms. She felt lighter now, her face still, frozen in a mask of pain. She’d died rather than fly again. I closed my eyes and lowered the body to the tier floor, unable to look at Moc.

  “Aunt Viridi?” Moc whispered.

  I barely kept myself from falling to my knees on the lowtower balcony. I’d wanted to take her to safety. Instead, I’d carried a Singer to her death.

  Stifling my grief made my headache worse. I envied Moc’s barefaced sorrow. He’d sung to her. He’d watched her die. His family. He looked suddenly very young, his face a mask of snot and tears.

  I understood the feeling, even if I kept my emotions barricaded now. If anything had happened to my family … Though I knew they were safe, or had been, my heart raced at the thought.

  My family. I had to get to them, but couldn’t move as Moc sobbed. The whispers behind the shutters increased.

  Moc turned from Viridi’s body and rushed at the doors, his fists balled as if intent on breaking them down.

  Hiroli grabbed him and tried to calm the boy, but he sobbed louder. How could I calm him? Wrestling him into the sky wouldn’t do that, no matter how badly we needed to leave.

  What would Elna do? She’d feed Moc. Get him water. We had none. She’d sing. That took time. Meantime, my heart pounded questions: Who survived? Is my family safe?

  I knelt by the fledge and put my hand on his head. “We’ll sing Remembrances for her.” It would have to be quick.

  Moc sniffled. “Singers don’t have Remembrances.”

  “What do you have?” Hiroli asked. Did you have, I silently corrected her.

  Moc bowed his head. “Their passage was marked in the codex. Their body fed the clouds, like everyone.” He stopped crying, but his face was mottled with red splotches.

  Tobiat had told me once that the Singers kept our culture intact when we rose through the clouds. “The Singers trained in every tower song and Remembrance tradition, for the towers.”

  Moc shivered. Wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His eyes, blue like his sister’s, were ringed bright pink. “Ciel was studying those, before.”

  Very gently and still trying to think how Elna would talk to the fledge, but feeling every moment pass, I asked, “What’s a favorite ritual, from any tower?”

  He shook his head, so mired in grief, he couldn’t help us help him.

  We were so close to the clouds here. So close to death ourselves. I sang Remembrance softly, under my breath, the way Densira and its neighbors did these things. I tried not to rush it. Hiroli joined me.

  Return on the wind, friend.

  The city marks your passage.

  We let silence hang in the air when we finished singing, and we all looked up to say good-bye. The sun was still high above us. We didn’t look down, not at the clouds, nor at the smoke still lingering, patchy, in the sky.

  I heard Moc gasping beside me, trying to stop crying. I bit my cheek hard.

  “That was good,” he finally said.

  “I can let her go into the clouds, all right? You fly with Hiroli to Bissel’s lowtower. Hide there. Aliati should be back from her search for Kirit soon. She’ll need to know about the attack.”

  Moc nodded again. Hiroli stared at me. I took her aside.

  “You have to guard him. They’ll take him. He had nothing to do with this.” She wore black wings. I was betting she could fend off the searchers. I couldn’t take the fledge where I needed to go next.

  She pressed her lips together. “We’ll wait for you there.” She lifted Moc and flew him away, closer to the clouds.

  I used a tether to lower the Singer from the tower. Viridi’s body disappeared into the clouds, carving a hole in the mist that slowly closed up as the air forgot her name.

  15

  HEARTBONE

  As I pulled myself up through shifting gusts towards the top of Varu, my shoulders ached like I, too, was once more draped with Lawsmarkers. Smoke and sorrow pressed painfully against my temples.

  I circled until I found a clear draft to Ezarit’s tier, where she’d likely be protected by guards. If blackwings searched for me, they would find me there. I’d make the hunt easy for them.

  The sky had emptied of fliers. Towertops and tiers nearest the missing council platform, once crowded with colorful robes and wings, now stood stark and nearly deserted. This portion of the city had obeyed the order to Fortify.

  A small clutch of people remained on the balcony of Varu’s topmost tier. Ezarit’s quarters. As I coasted closer, I spotted Ceetcee’s yellow wings wedged tight between two sets of black.

  Blackwings hunt traitors. The tier was not being protected. It was being guarded.

  Blackwing guards circled wary above Varu. I set aside my exhaustion, determined to take the hawk’s path. Silent and dangerous. Sharp and sudden.

  They wouldn’t see the junior councilor; they’d see a hero of Spirefall.

  The nearest guard met me in the air. Though I approached alone, she whistled to her fellows to warn them. I rolled, letting her streak past as I slashed out with my knife hand. My blade nicked a black silk wing, and I heard a satisfying rip.

  I didn’t look to see where she tumbled.

  Fighting to regain my flight angle, I almost overshot the tower. Instead of circling again, I tucked my wings and spilled air, dropping fast. Only at the last minute did I extend the spans to slow my fall, landing hard on the balcony.

  I shook off the impact and moved faster, not bothering to furl my wings. Silk seams fluttered in the wind as I strode towards the little group. They stood before a seated man wearing torn, embroidered robes. I pushed the next guard who rushed at me with the blunt handle of my blade. I didn’t want to hurt them. They were watching for attacking Singers. Not a lone councilor, with a singular goal.

  They will let Ceetcee go, or they will take me in her place. I rounded on the group and saw Elna seated on a stool, bracing her back against my partner’s legs. Elna also. The two women shivered in the cooling air, Ciel kneeling between them.

  Could I convince the guards to let them go? Beliak sat on the tier floor, wrists bound, eye swelling, as if he’d already tried to free them, and lost. And Beliak. All of them.

  Could I convince Ezarit and the council to free them?

  While the guards in the air had been patrolling the sky, the guards on the tier were caught between watching their charges—Ceetcee, Elna, Beliak, and Ciel—and coming after me.

  Ezarit was nowhere to be seen. Her tier was wide open, unfortified. Furnishings from inside her quarters—several cushions from Amrath, two bone stools, had been repositioned so that Doran sat beneath the towertop’s shelter, while Elna and the others remained outside. I heard the notes of Ezarit’s scavenged metal wind chime from somewhere deep inside the tier.

  Doran had arranged the seats so that he could speak eye-to-eye with Elna. It was considerate, and put him at a disadvantage.

  I was beside him in three strides. As he turned, I sheathed my knife. Still, the guard to Ceetcee’s right immediately lifted a blade to her shoulder. The blackwings in the sky circled closer. Another guard shifted their knife grip, preparing to throw, if necessary.

  Doran held a hand up wearily. “The councilor isn’t our enemy.” He turned his ash-smudged face to me. “Are you?”

  He’d named me a councilor still. Confusing, given the message chips. Given everything that had happened today.

  “Where is Kirit, Nat? Did you help her escape? My own apprentice?” Doran rarely asked so many questions. He preferred to know answers before a discussion. His clothing, too, was in disarray.

  “I didn’t collude with anyone. I’m loyal to this city. As is everyone here, and Kirit too. I don’t know where she is, but I know s
he wouldn’t attack the council, or her family.”

  At least, the Kirit I’d grown up with wouldn’t do that.

  “And you, Doran? Are you loyal to the city?” I inclined my head towards the guards, forcing calm I didn’t possess. Dix was nowhere in sight, but even so, asking was a risk. Still, I had to know.

  A heartbeat passed. Another. Doran bowed his head and waved “stand down,” to the guards. Then he stood, shakily, lifted a water sack, and sipped at it. He held the sack out, offering it to me. I drank my fill, and the pain in my head began to release.

  He bowed, formally, and I could see the pain it caused him. “This is a day of great tragedy. You are welcome here, Councilor Densira. You flew well today, in the city’s name. I am loyal to the city, same as you. And yet I may have trusted in the loyalty of others too much.” From Doran, it was a powerful apology.

  It was also a strange greeting for a guest from another tower. “Where is Ezarit?” She should have greeted me, not Doran.

  “We haven’t found her yet. She disappeared chasing a Singer.” He spoke truth. I’d seen the same. “Macal leads the search for her. Meantime, I’ve quartered here by necessity, to be close to the scene of the attack and await her return.” His words were quiet and tinged with despair. But as the drink cleared my mind, doubt began to nag again. Had Doran been surprised by the attack, or was he pretending?

  He sounded truly concerned for Ezarit’s safety, though he’d tried to outmaneuver her.

  Beyond Doran, Ceetcee met my gaze, her clear brown eyes set and determined. She’d spoken her conscience today. I knew that look. She would take their censure and plan to speak her conscience again, no matter how many Lawsmarkers they gave her. But as long as I was still a councilor, there’d be no such punishment. She’d had a right to speak, as every citizen did since Spirefall. As they had, at least, until the council attack.

  The two guards I’d pushed through to get to the tier landed, one carrying the other. They glared at me. Beyond Doran, Elna looked exhausted, but she was unharmed. Beliak’s left eye was now swollen shut. No one spoke. Ceetcee’s lips shaped silent words: “We are fine.”

  That calmed me a little, as she’d meant it to do.

  “And the fledges?” I didn’t see the children I’d rescued from the Spire.

  “Taken to Mondarath, so Macal’s people can watch over them.” Doran shifted in his seat. At his shoulder, a wound blossomed beneath a bandage. “Nat, I thought we’d prepared for Conclave; we took the Singers’ wings away, sequestered them. That we could not be attacked like this.” He was right. We had done all those things. “How could this happen?”

  “How, indeed?” Kirit hadn’t trusted him, and I hardly could either now, but I needed his help. I tested him. “With respect, you seem shocked by the day’s events, Councilor.”

  “Weren’t you? This is a terrible day.”

  Dawning possibilities. Doran had played Ezarit into a corner with the horns and Conclave. But the attack had foiled his plans to assume full leadership. Perhaps he was as surprised as the rest of us.

  “I made many mistakes today,” he said. He had been caught off guard: Doran didn’t admit mistakes. But he continued, “I should have hunted down every single Singer and kept them from colluding. Their secrets and lies endangered us all for too long. Now I have endangered my council. My city.” His words outraged me, but his grief didn’t seem to be an act.

  I weighed what I knew of him—that he loved the challenge of council leadership, the give and take of debate, that he had a vision for the city that demanded compliance and loyalty. Ezarit had spoken about him bargaining for advantage, and Kirit had warned that Doran did not like to be opposed in his own tower.

  Elna had opposed him with her speech, and Ceetcee, by rousing the protestors, but they hadn’t scuttled his wind entirely. Conclave would have proceeded, until the attack. This hadn’t been his doing.

  “So many are missing.” Doran’s shoulders bowed. Someone had nearly pulled the wings from his back. He put his elbows on his knees, his head on his hands. “I thought we knew where every Singer was. I thought you were tracing the runaways.”

  He suspected the fledges now? “Those were adults on the plinth. Singers had nothing to do with the attack.” What I’d seen—and hadn’t—was proof. “The attackers’ faces? I saw no tattoos.” I pointed at the guards. “They might as well have been these blackwings. And where are all the confiscated gray wings stored? How would anyone get hold of more?”

  Doran looked up at me. Made as if to rise, but sat back down heavily. “Kirit goes missing and then there’s an attack. The towers can see that she wears gray wings. They want a simple answer, so they can move on.”

  The smoking remains of the council platform had no simple answers. I doubted there was a simple enemy.

  The nearest guard cleared his throat. “I didn’t see tattoos either.” Doran frowned at him, then nodded, considering his statement.

  Pitching my voice so everyone assembled on the tier could hear me, I made my proposal. “Someone wants the city to blame the Singers for this. If you’re not behind the attack, Doran, you’re playing right into their hands.”

  The nearest guard drew her knife again. She closed her fingers around the grip. “Don’t speak that way, Densira.”

  “Let him speak.” Doran’s order weakened to a smoke-filled cough at the end.

  Keeping my eyes on Doran to better see his reaction, I made a plain shot, right at the matter’s heart. “I believe Dix is behind this.” No preamble. “Your fighter. How are you not involved?”

  He frowned. “Dix is many things, apparently. But how could she launch an attack when she was been busy battling you in a wingfight?”

  The guards looked at me, impassive. Ceetcee’s mouth was a sharp line of distaste. She’d never seen Doran in a council debate until today. He might be weakened by surprise, but he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to throw an opponent off balance, just like on the council platform. By reminding everyone that I’d lost, again, he’d tried to discredit me once more. But I didn’t relax my focus. “Dix left right after the fight. There was enough time, barely, to fly south. To signal or send a bird.” I waited a beat to let that sink in. “And she’s been weakening the Spire below the clouds. Making a gas that would float a platform like that one.” Just like that platform. Doran knew.

  A long pause. Overhead, a kavik screeched at us, then flew towards the northwest. “I know of Dix’s operation,” Doran acknowledged. He tried to keep his voice low, but everyone heard.

  Silence barricaded the wide-open tier, like shutters sealed the tiers below; the guards’ faces were expressionless.

  My friends looked between us in confusion.

  “You knew?” Beliak rose, as if to move towards us. A guard grabbed his arm.

  Doran shifted, uncomfortable on the stool now that he was under scrutiny. “It was for the future. At some point, towers will stop growing as we need them to. The city’s too crowded to sustain that. The Singers knew we were close. They saw the towers slowing, their tiers getting more crowded, more brittle. We need the gases from the heartbone—”

  I raised both hands in frustration, then lowered them slowly, calming Beliak. Kirit had been right not to trust Doran. “You knew of it. Who’s to say you didn’t know of the attack in advance too? You were pleased to see the Spire in danger, called it advantageous. Why not escalate?”

  “I don’t agree with Dix’s methods, some of which I’ve only recently learned. But the heartbone was a necessity. And, Nat, I would never. An attack on the council is an attack on myself.” He put his head back in his hands, then scrubbed at his hair with his fingernails. “So many of our people hurt.”

  He sounded truly unsettled, matching my own feelings. I remembered now that in the confusion, Doran had been among the first to shout, “Fly!” the first to sound the alarm. He’d seen the danger and thought of the people’s safety. And was as sure now that the Singers were behind this.

  W
as I still certain they weren’t?

  Yes, he was manipulative and angry enough to pit me against Dix in order to fight to speak, but seeing him in disarray underscored the possibility he hadn’t planned for this. Was it an act? Kirit would say maybe. I wavered. His wording still felt wrong: “necessity.”

  He saw my indecision and gripped my forearm. “I’ve made mistakes and trusted the wrong people. Now there is no time to waste, Nat. There are few enough guards, and fewer councilors who can keep the city from falling into chaos. There are calls for Macal to step down, and I need his vote. I need your help.”

  My family, assembled between the guards, watched us. “You have an odd way of showing it.”

  “Nat, your family aren’t prisoners!” He looked shocked that I thought so. “I kept them here for their protection. The towers are raging, Nat, at what’s happened to their councilors, their friends and relatives.” He reached to pat Elna’s hand. Elna gently pulled her fingers away from his touch.

  “Spurred on by the kavik messages.” I gestured for the message chips. Held them up on their yellow silk cord.

  Doran looked at the chips, brow wrinkling. “Those aren’t from me. Show me the bird?” He hadn’t sent the message.

  “Hiroli sent it back.” The bird hadn’t recognized me, and I hadn’t recognized the bird. Curious.

  “I’ll look into it,” Doran said. “Angry towerfolk—including from Densira, where Vant is missing—have already tried to attack the protesters in the air. They might have forged message chips as well. Your mother and Ceetcee were in danger, so I kept them here. I did that for you, Nat.”

  Doran’s heavy brows arched over his dark eyes. Worry for the city and confusion about what was happening etched his face. The attack. The message birds. Someone had gotten the drop on him. Were they Spire or Tower?

  He continued, “We are holding the surviving Singers. We’ll find the rest soon. And then we will have a true Conclave. End this once and for all.”

  A Conclave, still. “You are making a mistake,” I said. “That won’t end it. You have a traitor in your midst. Even after a Conclave, the traitor will remain.”