by Fran Wilde
Footsteps quietly approached, and the sound of footslings dragging on the moss. Ciel and Ceetcee, with Beliak behind them. Ciel put her hand on Kirit’s shoulder. After a moment, Kirit touched Ciel’s fingers with her own.
Ciel began to sing Remembrance. Kirit, after a moment, joined her.
They sang through the verses once, then again. A third time. Kirit’s tattoos pulsed, and the valley filled with soft blue lights along the ridge walls and in the moss.
One was close enough for me to reach out and touch. My hand brushed slick skin, a curved tentacle that grabbed for my finger.
Littlemouths. The glow was coming from cloud-born littlemouths.
Across the valley nearest where Kirit sang, they clustered, numerous. A few pulsed farther from her. Kirit and Ciel finished the song. Aliati drew Ezarit’s robe over her head, while removing the knife from her back. All bathed in a blue glow.
In the silence that followed, the lights slowly faded, and the ridgeline shadows grew longer, as darkness took the valley for its own.
19
THE ARTIFEX
We left the valley’s shadows and climbed the ridgeline to get high enough to fly.
Kirit walked in silence, leaning hard on Ciel. She’d agreed to let Ceetcee remove her gray wings and fouled robes down to the undersilks. She hadn’t protested when Ceetcee wrapped her in a spare overlayer—my hunter’s cloak—and slid a pair of green silk wings that Aliati had found over her shoulders.
Now we walked from the valley at her side, thinking our own thoughts, occasionally whispering, but Kirit’s silence felt like a void where no sound could enter or leave. We wove our presence around her like a net.
The resolve I’d carried with me from Doran’s to find the traitors only strengthened as we climbed the ridgeline above the valley where the council had come to rest. We would honor Ezarit’s life, her sacrifice. We would honor them all.
We had a single day until Allmoons now. When we’d climbed high enough on the ridgeline to fly, I could send Doran a message about what we’d found. I hoped he would listen, and that he could get the city to listen.
Over my shoulder, I asked Ciel to pass back a request: “Beliak, ready Maalik to fly.”
The ridgeline turned, obscuring our sight of the valley. We angled up, away from one tower’s expanse, towards another. The mists parted in front of us, layers of fine curtains. Occasionally, we saw littlemouths in the distance, pulsing once, twice, then disappearing.
Walking next to Aliati, I searched the ridgeline for signs we were clear of the valley’s wind shadow. In the mist behind us, Ciel held tight to Kirit’s hand. Kirit had pulled my cloak’s hood over her head, closing herself off from us. Ceetcee and Beliak brought up the tail end of our group. He raised a hand in acknowledgment and broke a graincake into pieces for Maalik. The bird bobbed and snapped at the food from Beliak’s shoulder.
Kirit walked slower with each step, as if an invisible tether kept her tied to the valley. Ciel towed her along, and Beliak whispered encouragements from behind. Keep moving.
Overhead, a shadow passed, still high enough in the clouds to have indistinct shape. Another. Birdcrap, we couldn’t let Maalik go up if he was going to be snapped from the sky by a predator.
But the way Aliati watched the shadows made me wonder. “Scavengers?”
She tilted her head. Looked again. “No. Scavengers work the towers mostly. They don’t stray too far from a way back up, rarely come this low. Those are gryphons, maybe. Or blackwings. They’ve been searching the clouds around the Spire since you, Moc, and Kirit fell from the sky. But most can’t echo so it’s taking them a long time.”
“Think they’re still looking for Kirit?”
“Maybe. Maybe something else.” She bit down on the last word, as if she regretted saying it.
I considered what Doran had said the day before. “Or they’re looking for the artifex who went missing.”
“I didn’t say that.” Aliati turned on me, sharply.
I knew only what Doran had told me, that Dix had sent a message about the missing artifex. When I’d mentioned it the day before, Aliati hadn’t reacted like this. Now, I was concerned. “What do you know, Aliati? Scavengers seem to have connections everywhere. If you know something that could help us, you should say so.”
She shook her head, no. Trudged on. I followed her closely. Changed the subject. “Where’s the knife you took off Ezarit’s body?”
She’d seen me watch her do it. She wouldn’t keep that knife as a scavenged trophy. Not while I was leading this group.
She reached into her satchel and pulled it out, wrapped in a strip of Ezarit’s robe. “I want to show it to someone.”
I took the wrapped knife from her. “Sell it, you mean. No.” Turned the bone handle over in my palm. This looked like the knife of a wingfighter. Not many glass-tooth knives left these days. No skymouths being caught, no glass teeth for knives. But I’d seen one with a similar handle at Grigrit, when Doran showed us the game, Justice. “There was a similar knife at Grigrit; Kirit and I both saw it.” Aliati and I turned to look back at the young woman trudging up the ridge.
On hearing her name, Kirit slowed. Looked up at us. She didn’t speak, but she listened. Ciel wrapped her hand more tightly around Kirit’s fingers. Kirit leaned on the girl’s shoulder.
“I’ve seen the knife before too. Over a game of Gravity.” Aliati had said at Bissel that she didn’t play. Now she did. What was the truth? The latter, probably. She had her own game board. “No, I would not sell this knife.” Her voice said, Don’t be skytouched. Her eyes spoke more sharply.
The more I learned about Aliati, the more I wondered what we’d gotten ourselves into, trusting her. She’d accompanied us below the clouds on little more than a whim and the offer of payment.
“Who do you want to show the knife to?” The fewer people who knew about our task, the better. Especially when it came to people who played strategy games with Dix’s confederates. Anyone who warned Dix or the knife’s owner would put us in jeopardy.
“A friend.” We’d crested the ridgeline. Above us, the bone-encrusted bridge ran from one tower to the next. Above that, shadows and clouds. A bird-shadow circled over us. Aliati chewed her lip. “You need to talk to him too.”
“Who?” I’d twisted my finger in the silk cord that once held my father’s message chip. Secrets. I hated them, what they did to my friends. “Aliati, tell me.”
For the first time since I’d known her, Aliati sounded frightened. “The artifex. The missing one. You need to talk to him.” But she didn’t slow her pace, she pressed on towards the bridge.
I stopped so suddenly, Kirit walked right into my back.
I grabbed Aliati’s arm, stopping her, making her look me in the eye. “How do you know where the artifex is?”
Yes, she was afraid, though I couldn’t tell if it was for herself, or for someone else.
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Pressed her lips tight enough to turn white. Then, finally, spoke. “Because I took him. I took the artifex from the Spire and put him someplace safe.”
* * *
With a single sentence, Aliati became immediately more useful in the undercloud, and far less reliable.
“You took the artifex?”
Doran and Dix each sought the artifex. We needed him. And Aliati had both stolen him and forgotten to mention it at Bissel.
“You took him where? And when were you going to tell us?” Beliak joined us at the front of the walk. He’d tied a yellow silk tether to Maalik’s claw.
Aliati scratched her ear. “I didn’t want him in danger. He’s a friend I’ve known a long time.” Simple words, and so devastating.
Kirit spoke, her voice hoarse. “We aren’t friends, then.”
“You’re wrong, Kirit.” Aliati turned. “I wouldn’t be down here if we weren’t. I don’t let my friends go into danger. But if they’re there, I try to help. Djonn—the artifex—was in danger, and neither of us had realized how much.
When I couldn’t find you, I saved Djonn.”
Kirit stared at her. Aliati pulled on the hoop in her ear and looked away first. I stepped between them, eyes on Aliati. The scavenger wouldn’t meet my gaze either.
A friend. Her friend, whose work required kidnapped fledges. But also, an artifex who knew more about Dix’s operation than anyone.
If Dix was involved with the council attack, Aliati’s friend might tell us. But why hadn’t Aliati told us? Scavengers lived by their own codes, certainly, but she’d known what we were looking for. And had wanted to protect the artifex from the blackwings, from the city. From us too, probably.
Unbidden, the tune for “Corwin and the Nest of Thieves” echoed in my mind. Ciel had sung it when we first came below the clouds. Corwin had retrieved something for the Singers. Something metal. We’d come here to retrieve answers. Aliati had descended into the clouds to look for Kirit, but had stolen the artifex instead, the man who had figured out enough of the cryptic marks on the metal plates to make lighter-than-air.
Corwin found a gleam of hope
He lifted himself by wing and rope
And returned the city to treasures old …
The Singers had maintained Corwin’s song through generations. When Tobiat taught it to Beliak, Ceetcee, and me, it had seemed like a bawdy, archaic myth. But not one of the songs the Singers kept as part of their legacy was purely for fun. They’d sung to remind themselves and others what happened to rebels and thieves. The towers had no such legends. When we made it back above the clouds, we could change that.
I made a fast decision. Moving away from Aliati, I knelt on the ridgeline and cut a message chip: Meet between the Spire and Naza, at dawn. We’ll find you. Then I took Maalik from Beliak’s shoulder and tied the chip to the yellow silk cord. “Varu. Doran.” Maalik had flown to Varu many times and recognized Doran. If he made it out of the clouds, he’d deliver our message.
We would bring proof to Doran: no tattoos among the fallen attackers, a very particular knife, and the artifex and his thief.
I tossed the whipperling into the sky and watched him circle up until he disappeared into the clouds.
Aliati watched me, pale. “I’m not the enemy, Nat.”
We needed her help, to show us where the artifex hid, to talk to Doran. I was wary of her, certainly, but could not make her a captive, couldn’t drive her away. When Doran needed to keep ties to a dubious ally, he spoke of need and trust. He sometimes shared a secret with them. With me, up in the tower, he’d shared the secret of the brass plates. Ezarit had done things differently. She’d listened to both sides, tried to understand.
We had no time for either. The woman who’d flown at our side during Spirefall, who’d guarded Wik but refused black wings, who’d hidden a friend away to keep him safe—and who had endangered us all.
“Take us to the artifex. Now.”
She gestured to the ridgeline’s peak, where another bone pile, this one much older and overgrown, stood before a small cave entrance. “We’re already here.”
* * *
“We can’t all go in,” Aliati said. “Nat and me, maybe Kirit if she wants to. Djonn needed someplace safe where he could recover. Dix was drugging him too, for much longer than the fledges.” Emotions played across her face: anger, concern.
Another shadow rippled the clouds overhead. We plastered ourselves to the entrance wall, feeling the slick bone cool through the silk panels of our wings. Another shadow followed, this one distinctly wing-shaped, and dark.
Blackwings. “We’re all going in. None of us stays exposed.”
A metal grate had been set into the bone, a few steps inside the cave entrance. It was latched.
With swift fingers, Aliati pulled a latch pin. The grate swung with a low squeal, and we stepped inside the artifex’s hideout.
The space, lit golden by a single oil lamp, was cluttered with gear. Large bone and metal tanks toppled together, a silk cord binding a stack of skymouth hides, invisible except as defined by the boundary. Two small, filled husks were tied down at the back of the cave, still large enough to float a person each.
“What do you do there, Aliati?” A young man slowly stood up from his place by the fire. The deep circles beneath his eyes, and the grease and stubble on his face made him seem much older than when I’d seen him last, when I’d passed him on the Spire.
On the floor, by a small cook fire that coughed acrid smoke, lay a brass plate like the ones Doran had taken from us. Over the cook fire, a small pot with a goose bladder above it slowly filled with gas.
The artifex took something from his robe and began to chew on an edge of it. It was the color of heartbone, and smelled worse. When he swallowed, he closed his eyes.
Aliati snatched the rest away. “I thought you’d done with that,” Aliati whispered. “We need you to focus.”
All of us crowded into the small cave made the space warm and uncomfortable. Ceetcee shivered, despite the heat. She hated tight, walled spaces, more than most tower-born. I looped my pinky finger through hers. Beliak took her arm on her other side. She squeezed back and seemed to relax, enough to ask the artifex, “How long have you been below the clouds?” Worried notes in her question. She always thought of the person before the job.
The artifex—Djonn—coughed. “Since before Spirefall.”
He looked away, but Aliati poked him with a finger. “Tell them!”
Reluctantly, Djonn began again. “Doran had us working on experiments, and wanted us to keep quiet. Undercloud was the best place for keeping things quiet. Dix moved me from Grigrit’s lowtower to the Spire after Spirefall. So…” He counted on his fingers. “Since before last Allsuns, at least.”
I shuddered, chilled by the thought of staying down here for a few days, much less that many moons. I pointed at the small pot on the stove, at the plate on the floor. “Do you know what you were making the gas for? What the plates are?”
The artifex scratched his head. Flicked his finger against his chest. Tap tap tap. A hard sound. He looked at the plate. “Dix found that after Spirefall, and Doran asked us if we could sort out how it worked. I was the one who figured it out.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said, frustrated.
Aliati put a hand on my wrist. “Give him time. He’s been through a lot.”
That doesn’t make it right.
Djonn met his friend’s eyes and smiled softly. “We worked on the gas for moons, always below the clouds, using different supplies. Some mixtures we tried made poison. Some exploded. The gas took so many of us. Then I managed to distill enough gas from the heartbone to fill a small bladder. It floated. It worked.”
He was dodging, I was sure of it. “We know Doran ordered the lighter-than-air for the city. Who ordered it for the attack?”
“What attack?” Djonn said. He looked at our clothing and soot-stained wings. His eyes grew wide. “No, no. The gas helps people fly. Even if they’re hurt. You can’t attack with it.”
He knelt awkwardly by to the cookstove, and I could see he wore a brace of some sort beneath his robe. He clipped the small bladder above the pot between his finger and thumb and slid it off a coiled metal tube. Knotted the bag closed and tied it with a string. Aliati saw the metal coil and smiled. “That was a good find.”
Djonn attached another bladder to the tube and left it hanging limp. He took a container and poured more heartbone into the pot below the bag. The whole operation took moments.
Then the artifex attached to the first sack a wind-up toy. The kind parents gave to children in the tiers, attached to a tether. He wound the small wings at the toy’s feet. When he let the toy go, it flew, bumping into the cave walls with a clicking noise.
“How did Dix pay you?”
He looked down. Hit his chest with his hand. It made a hard sound, of flesh meeting bone. “I am in some pain. The distillation process made a residue that lessened it. They let me keep that.”
Aliati shook her head and looked at t
he piece of residue in her hand with disgust. “They played on your pain.” Then she turned to me. “His spine’s twisting. He can no longer fly. It’s very painful now and could kill him later. That’s why I couldn’t leave him in the Spire, not when the blackwings were chasing Kirit. He’d have been at their mercy.”
“What did you see, Djonn?” Beliak asked. “Did anyone come talk to you?”
“Only the blackwings who took the gas away. Once, Dix.”
“Where did they take it?”
“I went up once, to where they stored it. In a spinner tower. Laria in the southeast. I saw them there.”
Time to see if Djonn’s story matched Aliati’s. “What’s your connection to Aliati, here?”
Djonn smiled. “She’s my friend. She brings me metal and things she finds sometimes.”
“Did she take you to the blackwings, ask you to help them?” Aliati stiffened by my side at the question.
But Djonn shook his head. “No. I worked with the Singers, before the Spire fell. I didn’t know what else to do after, so I kept working. Then Dix found the plate. I work with the Singers now too.”
The cave went deeply quiet.
“No. You don’t work with Singers,” said Aliati sharply.
Djonn shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
Strange indeed. Aliati turned and tried to push us from the cave. “This was a mistake,” she said. “He’s mad with the drug. He’ll say anything.” But she looked truly afraid for Djonn. For herself.
I edged around her. Knelt next to Djonn at the cook fire. “There are no more Singers,” I said. “Not since last Allsuns. Only citizens. You are mistaken.”
How long had he been working in the clouds? Had he gone skytouched?
Djonn smiled, his eyes more relaxed now. “Dix let me meet the Singer, after Spirefall. He was very ill and couldn’t talk, but she said he needed to move around and couldn’t use the bridges, couldn’t fly. Said he needed me to try to perfect the gas for him. Said I had to work in secret, like before. They gave me the brass page.” Djonn smiled. “And I did it. Better than anyone has.”
My throat closed in dismay. A Singer. If Singers were involved, Doran would continue with his punishment. The protesters would be in jeopardy too.
