by Fran Wilde
“But who? Dix? Where is the proof? She’s done important work for the city, and has her own following in council. No one should accuse her without credible proof. Besides, she’s sent a bird already. During the attack, her most talented artifex was kidnapped.” He shook me lightly. “Don’t you see? Perhaps there is a traitor, but it can’t be Dix. She is loyal to me.” I tensed so I would not shake him back. I was more sure than ever that it was Dix.
Whether his intent was good didn’t matter right now. Doran had created a culture where power needed an enemy to work against. Now it seemed to be working against him. For a moment, I’d thought he’d heard me. But then he shook his head.
“You’re reacting out of shock, Nat. The towers will demand justice, as soon as possible. And, if you are loyal to the city, I need you here. You are a hero. You showed compassion today, but now you need to help lead us out of this.”
He needed me still. Was that a ripple of worry beneath his bravado? I pressed my case. “What if attacks continue after the Singers are thrown down? Who falls under suspicion next?” The fledges? The protesters? Macal? I couldn’t allow that.
Doran pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. Worry building, I continued. “I see other possibilities. As head of council, you can give me time to investigate. To bring back proof that the Singers didn’t do this. That someone else plots against the council, and against you.”
He leaned back, intertwined his fingers into a towertop. “Your point about attacks continuing is a real risk. And perhaps showing myself to be fair during difficult times cannot hurt me. I’ll give you until Allmoons to make sure I’m right.”
Allmoons was only two days away. I had to figure out where to begin and how to keep my family safe. Doran looked at where the council plinth once hung, then down over the tower’s edge. “Although I am afraid what you seek is lost in the clouds.”
Memory of falling through mist and smoke. Of being pulled down and fighting free. I took a deep breath. “Then I will go into the clouds.”
For a moment, the tier was so silent, we could hear the family below lighting their cook fire and preparing dinner behind their barricade.
“You can’t be serious,” Doran said.
I’d survived the clouds twice already, even if I hadn’t gone very deep. And that was where the fallen council plinth would be. That was where I’d find answers. “I’m very serious. I’ll start from the remains of the attack, if I can find it, and work backwards to prove that it wasn’t the Singers. That it was Dix.”
“And I’ll go with him,” Beliak said. He shook his guard free and came to stand beside me. Maalik wriggled from Beliak’s pocket and flapped to my shoulder.
Beyond the balcony, the sky turned pink at the clouds’ edges. These were shorter days as we approached Allmoons. Any survivors unfound by now would be stranded in the clouds’ dark chill.
Below us, the city rumbled.
Doran stood, shakily. “Until you prove otherwise, I must hold the Singers responsible for attacking the council. They will be hunted in the city and punished on Allmoons. I cannot go against the city’s will any longer than that. But I will give you until then.” He waved at a guard, who gently raised Elna to her feet, then pulled Ceetcee forward.
Every muscle in my body tensed. “Leave them out of this.”
“On the contrary, Elna put herself into it, with her rousing speech,” Doran said. “She must be protected. She’ll wait with me, and will be well cared for while you search for your proof that the Singers aren’t behind this attack.” A marker held as a guarantee against us escaping? Perhaps. But he would not harm her. I believed that. “And you, Ceetcee Densira. What will we do with you?”
Beliak tensed beside me. I twisted the silk cord at my wrist until my pulse throbbed against it. They could not keep her, but I wanted her safe.
“I will go with them,” Ceetcee said. Not a drop of fear in her voice. “And we’ll take Ciel. She can echo, and in case the towers turn on the Singer fledges, she’ll be safer with us.” She took the fledge’s hand and walked to stand with us without waiting for permission. Her fingertips brushed the heel of my hand.
Doran bowed his head. “Very well. You have two days until Allmoons. You will go beneath the clouds immediately. No lingering, or I’ll worry that you are in danger, or colluding. Send me a message by whipperling if you do find answers, or come here. And I will do one thing more, because I want you to know how important you are to me. I’ll give you supplies: tethers, food, grappling claws. The clouds are dangerous, and few return. You may find answers there, or you may find something sharper of tooth. I’d like to see you come back to the city and help it grow past this tragedy.”
Worry blew through the tier like an eastern wind. Cold and ruthless. I’d convinced him to hear me, but at what cost?
Ceetcee stood to my left, her long braids glittering, her clear brown eyes and long eyelashes the things I loved to see first each day. Beliak’s rope-strong arms rippled beneath his robes too. His cropped hair and gap-tooth grin made him look younger than his twenty Allmoons.
Below the city, the clouds had swallowed Kirit Skyshouter, my wing-sister, the council, and all those on the platform who had not escaped.
Now the city held my mother hostage while two I loved most in the world were headed with me below the city, into the all-devouring clouds.
16
LIGHTER-THAN-AIR
Doran and his people helped us prepare to descend into the clouds. One guard found me a new footsling and swapped out my patched one. Another, the guard I’d pushed aside earlier, reached for my satchel to fill it with supplies, and not gently. I grabbed for the strap, remembering the metal plates I carried there.
A singed spot on the strap tore with our pulling, and the woven bag upended on the balcony. The bag’s flap fell open and the metal plates I’d carried for Kirit struck each other with a clang.
“What is this?” Doran moved very swiftly for an injured man. The light hit the plates and illuminated the careful, unreadable notations. The plates were more beautiful than anything I’d seen retrieved from below.
Doran lifted both plates and ran his fingertips over the engraved marks.
Dangerous myths. Wik’s words. Best not to show those to anyone right now.
Too late. Doran grasped the plates with the kind of reverence that one would have for any metal salvaged from downtower. More reverently, in fact.
“Do you know what these are?” he asked me. “They’re our birthright. Dix found one of these at Spirefall, hidden in Rumul’s effects. She sold it to me. It took artifexes moons to realize it was a method of distilling gas, different than what we’d known. Nat, the Singers hid these from us. They kept the old knowledge of our people from us, what was lost when we rose through the clouds. Imagine the secrets in this one plate!” He let the plate etched with lines and circles tilt so that it reflected the sunlight.
“I don’t understand,” I finally said. “The plate had been inside one of the codex tablets for a long time. Little oxidation on the metal. No wear. Kirit didn’t know they were inside. No one knew.”
Doran held the plate reverently, as if it was more proof against the Singers. “They hid knowledge from us.”
I rocked back on my heels. Doran hadn’t only wanted Kirit to find the codex, he’d wanted her to find out if the codex might conceal more of the plates.
“Nat. Nat—” Doran protested. “The city needs these secrets. As many as we can find. We need the knowledge to rise higher, like we need the gas—the lighter-than-air. Imagine how we could evolve?”
I imagined, against my will, flying platforms, hang-sack sleeping nets transformed into living quarters. Explorations of what lay beyond the city’s edge. Discovery. I couldn’t ignore the attraction. Perhaps that same feeling had led Doran to ignore signs of Dix’s treachery.
“Why would the Singers hide the plates inside the codex, then?” My curiosity was won. I would know this before I faced the clouds.
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“Perhaps the right word isn’t ‘hide.’ Perhaps it’s ‘protect.’” Doran held out one hand after the other. Then he wrapped his left hand around his right. “Perhaps they were preserving the plates, as they did everything. Maybe in a time of war. Maybe they hid them so well, they forgot where they’d put them.”
“They left us a hint in our Laws,” Elna whispered. “Delequerriat—to hide in plain sight, for the good of the city.”
She was right. Maybe Singers put a clue in the Laws for us, to tell us to look. But once it was safe to bring them out again, we’d forgotten they existed, except for our myths.
“Why do we need the plates?” Beliak asked. “We have a traitor attacking us. We could be at war. We need weapons, not instructions for our ancestors’ tools.”
Ceetcee looked at him from where she and Ciel were rolling up quilted robes for sleeping in. “Wouldn’t being able to fly higher than your enemies be an excellent weapon in war?” She was an artifex first and foremost.
Doran nodded agreement. “Nat, I will tell you a truth that few know, as a way to show my regard for you, despite your doubts of my intent. Yes, I can see it written plainly on your face.” He patted my shoulder. “It’s not only that tower growth is slowing. We need the gas because the towers cannot rise forever: they’ll stop growing entirely. We’ve been looking for solutions for some time. And this gas—lighter-than-air—Dix understood that.”
“Why not tell the city?” Ciel asked.
“Can you imagine what people would do if they knew the towers wouldn’t keep rising?” Doran paced before me. “The city wasn’t ready for it when Naton fell. They weren’t ready when the Spire broke. And now, thanks to this attack, they may never be. They’ll see the gas as a weapon. This attack ruined my plans. If you succeed below, when the council re-forms, I’ll need you there. Now that you know. Together, we’ll leverage the towers’ unity. We’ll show them the good we can do with this new tool. You’re a unifying figure. A hero. You helped save the city once. They’ll listen to you on this. I need you to help save it again.”
Ciel charged forward, looking to fight him, me—it didn’t matter. “You go into the clouds, then!” but Beliak caught her and drew her back before the guards bound her too.
“You show your needs in interesting ways, Doran. Enslaving fledges?”
“Dix said she’d take care of getting the heartbone we needed, and I trusted her. Perhaps too far. We couldn’t tap the occupied towers. The Spire was … an opportunity.” Doran stood now. We were the same height. He’d always seemed taller, before. “We need you too, Nat. Your heart is in the right place.”
He offered me power, but it was tainted. What would my father have done? I found Naton’s broken message chips in my pocket and flipped them over, thinking. He would have drilled holes in this plan.
Elna lifted her head. Her clouded eyes reflected the sky over Doran’s head. “Did you put this to the council?”
Doran coughed. Once, a simple negation, backed with smoke. “Council wouldn’t understand, not immediately. We were going to show them proof. To float them in the sky. We were going to rise again, beyond the towers this time—free for a moment from the city’s rumbling, its crowding…”
He held out his hand, palm out, fingers opening. Expansion. Exploration. I saw his plan for the city.
“Instead, they saw your proof when it attacked them. Who did know of this?” Aside from me, perhaps Kirit, and the Singer fledges.
He scratched his head with the same fingers. “Inaro, one of my wives. Rya, my daughter. I prepared them for changes that would occur because of shifts in the city’s economics. Ezarit.”
Elna’s shock echoed the word. “Ezarit knew?”
Doran smiled at her. “She knew. She endorsed it. I’d had artifexes working on the gas for years—trying different kinds. The Singers were little help. And then we came across the plates: older downtower experiments, notes from older artifexes.”
“Ezarit knew?” Elna was louder now. “How could she know and do nothing?”
“She didn’t know how the gas—we call it lighter-than-air—” Doran frowned. “She didn’t know how that was procured. She knew only that it existed. That it could be, eventually, traded and sold. Of course she endorsed it.”
Ezarit wasn’t here to defend herself, either. What would he say about us, if we failed to return? He’d said he wanted us to succeed, but if we were lost in the clouds, we, and our arguments, would be safely out of the way.
We were going into the clouds with Ceetcee pregnant, Beliak’s eye swollen shut. Ciel. “Ceetcee cannot go,” I said. “Let her stay with Elna.”
“Clouds take you, I’m going,” she answered. “No child of mine will grow up under a lie. I am healthy and can fly for several moons more.”
I knew the look on her fierce face well. There was no arguing. Beliak nodded. Ciel watched as a guard prepared a pack for her. Pointed to one of the knives in the guard’s sheath. The guard shook his head, no. He did consent to share from his quiver of arrows with me, for which I was grateful.
Doran turned to me. “You want to know the city’s secrets, Nat. I know you do. I’ve shared what I know with you. Now you must find more answers, and help the city by doing so, I hope. On your wings, Councilor.”
He addressed Ceetcee. “You’re a bridge artifex. You know the problems Dix is addressing. If not Dix, we need someone skilled to guide this project. You might be one of those people. Come back safely, Risen.”
Ceetcee narrowed her eyes. She liked the idea a little, I could see, but she didn’t like Doran. “The weakened Spire is still a risk. Your project puts towers in danger, and people. Now the lighter-than-air you’ve made is a weapon. How can we live this way?”
Doran squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll fix the Spire’s danger with the lighter-than-air, Ceetcee. More lighter-than-air means we can float families to other towers quickly if we need to. We have enough stored to do that.” Before the council platform’s ruins, Doran’s vision expanded.
But we’d heard enough. We had no lighter-than-air here, and it would do us no good below the clouds. Doran clasped our hands, murmuring, “On your wings,” until he got to Ciel, who demurred, eyes down, as if she was shy, but I saw her teeth clench.
I kissed Elna’s thinning hair and whispered, “I’ll be back for you.”
“I know you will,” she said. “Mercy on your wings.”
Then Doran’s guards launched off the hightower balcony and circled, waiting. There was no more time. Ciel leapt from the tower and wobbled on her fledge wings, followed by the three of us. The guards whistled a chevron formation, allowing Ciel to draft behind them.
* * *
A clean, westerly breeze filled my wings, buoyed me up, and brushed my cheeks cold.
Wind always forgets the harm done to it. It bears no grudges, no scars. Not like us.
Off my windward pinion, the sun dipped into the cloudtop, tinting the bases of towers brass and rose as we passed them. We flew as an arrow-point through the evening, not towards the city’s edge, but to its center.
When we came to Bissel, we passed the tier where Hiroli said she’d meet us. Found it empty. The blackwings searching for Singers must have gotten to them first. Ciel looked towards me, worried.
“We’ll find them,” I said, not sure at all that we would. Worse, we would have to protect Ciel, more than ever. Until we found the traitor, all Singers would be hunted. Even fledges.
The guards took us to the edge of the mist. Left us on a ledge three tiers below the cloudtop and slipped back above, into the setting sun.
Atop the ledge, I shivered. We were here, now, because I’d wanted to be on council, to lead. To never be downtower again. To uncover the city’s secrets. For a few moments, I let myself think miserably about what my ambition had brought to my city, my friends, to my family. Then Ciel nudged me, her face far more serious than I would have thought possible for her age, until I remembered what she’d been through. “We�
��ll find the traitor,” she said.
“We will,” I promised her. “We’ll make things better for you, and for everyone.”
“Do you think Doran’s telling the truth?” Ceetcee asked. “About the plates? Dix? Do you think he believes the Singers did this?”
“I think he’s telling the truth as he sees it,” Beliak said. “I think he’s telling the only truth the city has right now.”
We would have to sift through layers of truth in order to find the answers we needed. We had to find a new truth below the city so that we could tell it above.
PART THREE
FOUND
On the wing, the new flock of black kaviks attacked smaller whipperlings as they discovered them. Circling, they watched the brown bodies drop to the clouds, before continuing to the next tower, and then another.
TREASON (revised)
The city betrayed, whether Council or quadrant,
Removes danger with unceasing might.
None are exempt, none immune.
To preserve the city,
all excise blight.
WAR
No tower will sabotage or war
With neighbors near or far.
We rise together or fall apart
With clouds below, our judge.
17
GHOST TOWER
Our world divided now between below and above. Missing and not. Proof and rumor.
City children learned early the clouds were dangerous. For us, now? Safety wasn’t guaranteed above the clouds, and below, we were on our own.
We had until Allmoons to prove the Singers weren’t at fault. To find out who’d attacked the council, who’d stolen the artifex, and why.
Two days.
We peered into the mist, unsure of where to begin.
Across the cloudscape, evening light slanted through thick air to reveal more towers’ forms. They loomed gray and green in the distance, some rising right through the clouds, others ending before they breached the surface. Larger shadows moved the depths below.
