Cloudbound

by Fran Wilde

  She hummed the tune, then sang it awkwardly.

  Five descend beyond the nest, far, far below.

  They find metal fine carved and bright of shine,

  but to it cannot hold.

  Drop it down, chase it down, ever farther down.

  Two return, with laughter burn, from far, far below.

  “And then Corwin comes and takes the rest of the metal from them,” she finished, waving her hand.

  I’d begun to feel more like myself, and I shuddered at the scavenger’s ghost story. Two return, with laughter burn. I remembered Aliati’s scowl when Ciel first sang the song. “Is there something in the clouds that makes us ill? A plant? A poison?” No one comes back from the clouds.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But in the song, they’d descended fast, and the ones who turned back survived.” Just as we had.

  If the Singers knew that verse to the song, Tobiat hadn’t shared it with us. Without Aliati, we might have disappeared, laughing, without a trace.

  “You saved us.” The sound of more water splashing nearby, but with a different level of intensity, stopped me from saying more. Around the bone spur that shaded us, and a short leap away, was an unprotected ledge. Three blackwings sat there, legs dangling over the edge. The mist between them and us had eddied until it was thin enough to see through.

  They leaned on each other, sides heaving with hilarity. One toyed at the air with his bow while another stood urinating off the edge. The waterfall sound.

  “Aliati,” I whispered. Pointed. “They’re sick too, and they’re not as far down.” And what about the others? Kirit and Doran and Djonn?

  Aliati pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose. “They’ve spent their entire lives in the towers. We’ve been below for a few days.” Her brow was furrowed.

  Ciel squinted. “Some of us fledges couldn’t stop giggling on the tower-tapping platform. But most of us got better.”

  We watched the blackwings. They didn’t look like they were getting any better. They looked as if they could barely breathe from laughing.

  “Leave them there,” Aliati said. “Let nature and gravity do what’s right.”

  Ciel stared, waiting. She sniffled a little and looked at her hands, perhaps remembering the fight at Laria. Meanwhile, Aliati sat on the ledge and turned her attention to her wings, checking the seams.

  We were many tiers below where the council had fallen. I pictured a blackwing deadfall down here, realizing I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone. “We need to make them go. To try at least. We can’t leave them here to die.”

  “They’d leave us.” Wik turned, frowning.

  I’m not them. I would never be. I couldn’t throw the rest of the bone markers in my satchel. That would only draw the blackwings farther downtower, making them more ill. I walked the ledge to where Ciel sat. “Do you have any firebugs left?”

  She unclasped her satchel and looked inside. “A few, but no fuses. No gas.”

  “Give me one anyway.” I took it in my hand and wound it. Pulled a piece of Ezarit’s robe from my pocket and tied a stretch of tea-colored silk to the firebug. Threw it back the way I thought we’d come, letting the catch go on the wound wings.

  The little firebug whirred away, dragging behind it the swath of silk. The fabric caught the few rays of sun that slanted through the clouds and shone bright.

  A blackwing shouted. One who’d been standing tumbled off the edge, but found enough of a gust to right himself. The others followed suit, and soon all were on the chase.

  My companions got to their feet and watched the piece of silk disappear.

  “What were you thinking?” Wik said. His robes had turned dark with sweat and damp. A scrape on his cheek crossed an earlier scar. “We have no advantages down here. That’s three more blackwings we may have to fight again.”

  I knew what I’d done, and why. Wik did too, he just didn’t like it. “That would be a terrible way to die.” I looked away from him, to Beliak and Ceetcee. To Ciel, who sat in a miserable huddle on the ledge.

  The girl’s face was white. “You showed mercy,” she whispered. “I didn’t.”

  Wik leaned down and touched her shoulder. Pointed to where Moc lay, breathing, still drugged. “You saved your brother.”

  “Not fast enough.” Ciel climbed over our feet to curl up with Moc.

  Beliak reached out to touch my shoulder. “You did right.” Then, “I was angry with you, earlier. For signaling. For keeping council secrets from us.”

  “I know. It’s all right to be angry. It’s good to talk about it too.” And it was, somehow, all right that I hadn’t been the perfect leader, the perfect me, and that he still stood by me. And I by him. For a moment, I felt warmth, despite the clouds. My stomach growled. Beliak’s did too.

  “We’ll find food once we find a cave,” Aliati said, hearing us. “If we find one.” She looked at me, eyes troubled. Another if. This one life and death. The cold caught me again.

  “If the weather ever clears,” Wik countered, ignoring Ciel’s crestfallen look. Hiroli shook herself more awake. She’d kept up with our dives remarkably well.

  A clatter of wings and a groan made us all jump.

  Doran and Kirit landed on the ledge, towing Djonn. They’d come from the tower’s opposite side, away from the blackwings. “Saw your signal from above,” Kirit said. She looked ill and tired, but it was she who supported Doran as he hopped towards us. His footwrap was a bloody mess.

  “Blackwing arrow. Almost missed me,” he said.

  Aliati and I both bent to look at the councilor’s ankle. He’d flown true, not run straight for the blackwings and safety.

  “Just a nick.” Aliati sat back after inspecting.

  I was less calm. “You could have been killed.” You might have killed each other. But they hadn’t.

  “No chance,” Kirit said. She reached a hand out to me. “I was looking for you. Echoing. You shouldn’t have stopped to signal, not until the blackwings were gone.”

  “I didn’t—” I started, but Doran interrupted. His bandaged hand had also begun bleeding again. “Kirit, you flew true. You could have left me. Instead, you guided us back. Thank you.”

  Was Doran playing both sides still, looking for advantage, even below the clouds? Kirit looked away, as uncertain as I, but proud she’d found us. For now, that would have to be enough too.

  Aliati peered at the clouds, shaking her head. What I’d done with the firebug and the silk had nothing to do with survival, with getting away. It could have backfired and endangered her, us.

  I’d questioned her loyalty when she chose to rescue her friend. Now I watched her think about the impact of my actions on the group’s safety. I saw the broader horizon: how she looked at Ciel, Kirit, and even me. She’d saved us not once but several times. Her knowledge kept us from greater danger.

  “You didn’t have to stay with us, you know,” I said. “You weren’t being hunted.”

  She cut her eyes at me. “You haven’t paid me yet,” she muttered, and kept thinking. Finally, she breathed deep and turned to me, then dipped her head to the right. “We go on from here,” she said.

  To where? Visions of tower guards patrolling above the cloudtop chilled me. So too, the blackwings’ shouts about us making war on the towers.

  “Down,” said Aliati. “Now that you’re acclimated, it should be safer. We’ll find a cave and regroup. We can’t go up yet, and there’s only one place I can think of trying to reach, from a very old song. I hope I can find it. I hope it exists.”

  We were caught in the towers’ deadly shadows, the sky forbidden to us.

  On every side, traitorous clouds cloaked our path. To survive, we had to put our trust in songs and myths. Words once nearly lost to the city would now be our only guides.

  25

  NEST OF THIEVES

  From our ledge, we could see through the mist a short glide in several directions. Gray and green shadows gathered everywhere, except u
pwind. There, a dark cloud brewed, seeming to grow larger, then recede. Aliati watched it warily, so I began to do the same.

  The wind carried few sounds to us, save an occasional dark rumble from the cloud.

  “I’ll search first. Rest.” Aliati tied a tether to the bone spur so she could find us again and leapt from the ledge.

  Wik shared pieces of dried bird his captors had given to him. He’d saved what he could, biding his time. Preparing to escape, even when addled by Dix’s drugs and cruelty. He hadn’t given up. I took a tiny strip of dirgeon. Kirit and Beliak did the same. We chewed it until it lost all taste and went stringy in our mouths. Ceetcee tried but spit hers out.

  Beliak reached into his sleeve, to the pocket he’d had sewn there. He withdrew my whipperling, gray and shivering, but unharmed. “He’s been tearing up my arm, and my head’s pounding. Take him?”

  “Maalik!” I was glad to see he was safe. But who would we send a message to down here? I let Maalik roost in my satchel. He settled down next to the brass plates, cooing at his faint reflection.

  Ceetcee, Beliak, and I tethered ourselves to the ledge wall behind an outcropping in order to rest. Ciel curled up next to us. Soon she snored softly. Doran wrapped himself in his cloak and glared out at the mist, and Djonn leaned against the wall next to him, blowing on his blistered palms. The ledge grew quiet, each of us wrapped in our own aches.

  Upwind, Kirit whispered to Wik, “What happened at Laria? Did you hear their conversations?”

  Wik whispered back, “I didn’t hear much.” His voice faded, then returned: “… kept me secluded, but the webs carried sound if you knew how to listen.”

  “Is Dix skytouched?” Kirit asked.

  I listened hard for Wik’s answer.

  Wik shifted, the silk of his robes rubbing against the wall. “I don’t know. She believes she knows how to save the city. Rumul believed the same thing. People are willing to follow belief.” He paused and took a deep breath. “But even Rumul had doubts and fears. Dix is so certain.” Wik’s voice quieted after each phrase. Then he coughed. “I am sorry about Ezarit.”

  On the ledge, Kirit drew a shuddering breath. Wik hummed to her, at first tunelessly, then finding the notes for The Rise.

  “Shhhh,” Kirit said sadly. “Blackwings might hear.”

  I closed my eyes and let them mourn in silence. When I slept, I dreamt fitfully: Moc in Rumul’s lap, laughing at me. Doran demanding answers about a vote. Dix shouting and pacing, carrying a dead man on her shoulders.

  I woke up stabbing at the air with my hands. Ceetcee whispered, “It’s all right,” in my ear. Around us, the others slept. Aliati had not returned.

  “How do we go from here?” I leaned my head against Ceetcee’s shoulder. “We can’t return to the city. Not while Dix has control.” Our botched attack had delivered the city to her.

  She squeezed my hand. “We’ll return. We’re part of the city too.”

  When I looked up, she had set her eyes on the clouds. “I thought by protesting Conclave, I could end it,” she said. “That we could escape that debt to the cloudbound we all carry.” Her grip on my hand tightened. “We can’t undo what’s been done in the city’s name, but I could try to keep it from happening again.” Ceetcee frowned, then leaned towards me, nearly nose to nose in the darkness. “Shifting the way people think isn’t simple. The Singers and Ezarit knew that. Even Doran knows it. I think Kirit was trying, with her refusals. With the firebugs and the blackwings? You helped people think about what was happening. What I attempted with the protest? You achieved.”

  “And I’ve dragged us here.” My voice wavered. “Stranded us. Stranded you.”

  Ceetcee stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to my forehead. “Others in the city will begin to question because we’ve questioned. They may not follow Dix so easily. Sometimes it just takes one action to change things.”

  Curls of cloud began to lick at the ledge and at our dirty footwraps, trying to disappear our legs beneath the mist. Ceetcee swung her foot until she could see her footwrap again, and I mimicked her motion. We kicked at clouds until they swirled away from the ledge, distracted for the moment from our griefs.

  To be still in the clouds was to risk disappearing. I refused to disappear.

  * * *

  A shadow appeared in the cloudbank. Wik tensed, alert. I reached for my bow.

  Through the mist came a familiar windsign—“retrieve.” Aliati dropped to the ledge, shaking her head. She’d had no luck.

  “We need to search lower, more of us,” she said. Her hair was slicked to her head, and her wings, though they still repelled the rain, dripped water onto the ledge. The spidersilk spans were soaked, despite their oil-proofing. “Storm’s coming.” She gestured to the growing dark clouds. A buffeting crosswind was building. “We need a real shelter.”

  “I’ll help,” I said. As I spoke, the wind increased. Our wings began to flutter, caught between the ledge wall and the swirling wind. Something struck my cheek, sharp and cold. I brushed it away, and my hand touched ice. Another piece hit me above my eye.

  Ciel shouted, “Ow!” as more ice fell. Moc struggled to his feet, looking for an enemy.

  The dark clouds nearest our ledge had grown nearer still and doubled in size. We’d experienced wind squalls in the towers, with rain, we’d watched lightning and thunder battle in the clouds. But a storm of this intensity was new to all of us.

  What I had thought was darkness now seemed light by comparison to that cloud. We tethered as many as we could to the tower trunk, bodies huddled together behind the windward outcropping. Then the wind swirled and shifted, driving rain at us from the opposite direction.

  Ciel squirmed, shocked. “It came on so fast.” Her face was suddenly illuminated: cheekbones, wide eyes. Then the ledge and sky turned white, the air smelled sharp, burnt. Hiroli nearly tumbled from the ledge with fear. “What is it?” she said. “Why is it happening?”

  “Lightning,” Aliati said.

  Beliak groaned. We tried to shelter him from the rain with our bodies, but he shivered with cold. Aliati knelt to press on his bleeding leg with a section of her robe. She looked up at me, water streaming off her face and braids. “We have to get him a place to lie down soon, out of the weather.”

  She was right, but we couldn’t move the group in this storm. The winds would toss any but the most skilled flier into a tower or the abyss. But one flier could risk it. How far did the squall stretch? I began to untie myself from the tether.

  Djonn grabbed my arm. “Storms that come quick go quick. Stay fast.”

  I hoped he was right. We huddled miserably in the battering wind and rain, waiting.

  When the thunder quieted, I caught snatches of Ciel singing The Rise to Moc. She’d added a verse. I heard the word “Skyshouter” woven into the song, then “Brokenwings.”

  “I had no idea,” I said, “that storms were this strong.”

  “They pass,” Aliati whispered in the darkness, agreeing with Djonn. “But they come in groups. Usually a couple at least.”

  “How big are they?” Even as I asked, the rain slowed. Would the winds reach as high as the ghost cave? Could we go up again? “How much time between bands?”

  Aliati shook her head. “No idea.”

  I climbed from behind the outcropping and peered across the ridge, but saw only gray shadows, gray rain. Djonn, sitting nearest, said, “You should take shelter again.”

  He tugged on my arm, then pulled me gently back as the humidity increased around us. I’d never felt so heavy, my skin sticky as spidersilk. An enormous boom made everything and everyone on the ledge jump again, but the tethers held us tight. Maalik, resting in my satchel, cooed fretfully. Moc began to shiver, and Doran and Ciel whispered to comfort him.

  I readied myself to fly as soon as the weather passed, checking wingstraps, the contents of my satchel. Then light flashed and the crackling smell came again. My vision swam and my ears rang.

  Hiroli jumped
again at the noise. Ciel calmed her, trying to explain. She made a hand motion that Elna had used once. A sign for war. The clouds went to war sometimes, and made those sounds, those lights. When we were children, Elna had told Kirit and me that story, often. They must have told it in the Spire too.

  I missed Elna searingly. Remembered watching a nighttime storm from the towers as a child. How the cloudtop lit up, then went dark. How red sparks sometimes danced for a few seconds atop the clouds. Elna had said the ghosts of our ancestors were fighting again. She’d said to never go looking for them in the clouds, that I would be lost.

  “It’s letting up. I’m going to search.” I untethered and stepped from behind the outcropping before anyone could argue.

  “And I,” said Wik.

  “I saw a tower on my last search, right at the end of my tether. I’ll show you,” Aliati said.

  Ceetcee and Doran agreed to remain with Beliak, Djonn, Hiroli, and the twins. They huddled against the ledge wall, trying to keep out of the spitting rain. Kirit hesitated, wanting to accompany us, but knowing the others would need help if the blackwings spotted them.

  “I’ll guard them,” she promised. “I will stay.”

  * * *

  “The tower I saw was farther down, and to the left,” Aliati said. “There were bones out front, but they looked very old.” She didn’t say whether that could be a scavenger cache or not.

  We had few tethers with us now; most were anchoring our remaining friends to the ledge. We relied on the single tether, and worked to stay together, flying close enough that we might not lose one another. Aliati began to echo, and Wik joined her, hoping to sound out any towers hiding in the shadows.

  They echoed to their offsides as we flew, and all of us kept our ears open for blackwings or bone eaters. If we found a cave, we’d be much safer from them. And drier, and eventually warm.

  Each time lightning pulsed, mist shimmered like glass beads on our wings. My legs ached from long stretches of flying and the footsling’s pull. Aliati had said storms could make old wounds ache too, and I was starting to believe her. I didn’t like it.