Cloudbound

by Fran Wilde

  “Fine, Ciel,” Moc whispered, annoyed that she could do it better than he. His sister’s face fell. She stopped humming.

  The light in the tunnel dimmed, then grew bright again as Wik hummed, a low baritone.

  The littlemouth I held pulsed with a flitter of undercurrent. A message, but not for us. For whom, then?

  Ahead of us, Moc cursed, surprised. “Clouds, Wik, your face.”

  Wik turned for a moment, and his muted laugh made me grin. His Singers’ tattoos were glowing softly. Like Kirit’s scars had, in the meadow where we’d found the council.

  Although the tension of the day before had eased, the world we’d entered was much stranger than the one we’d fallen from. From the far back of the cave, more light showed dimly, though Wik had stopped humming.

  The glow increased around the first branch of tunnels, and we watched it build. For the first time since Laria, Moc began to look awake and interested.

  “Want a job?” I asked him. He nodded, hesitant. “I name you chief explorers.” They both grinned.

  “But Wik and I should go first,” I said. “No telling what’s down there.” The former Singer seemed much more comfortable in narrow spaces than I felt, but I’d brought them here. I should move into the lead.

  Ciel made a face and kept walking. “We’ll be careful.”

  Behind us, on the other side of the alcove, Ceetcee tended Beliak in a cold cave. And above us, Elna sheltered in a stranger’s tier.

  “If I’d been more careful, my family would still be safe at Densira.”

  “If you’d been more careful,” Wik replied, “the fledges would still be in the undercloud, mining the Spire. You didn’t cause this, Nat. Dix has been manipulating the city since Spirefall.”

  And the city had fallen for it. Easier to have an enemy the towers could call unlucky, or worse, than to learn who we were now, and who we wanted to be. Even I’d fallen for Dix’s manipulations early on. Deciding the fledges were lost, the Singers were to blame for the riots and everything else. How many had helped her do what she did? Doran, even if unintentionally. Were there others? Something Ezarit had said about not knowing who to trust nagged at me.

  Ciel pulled at my sleeve. “If you’re going to lead, lead.”

  I laughed. “We might as well know where we are.”

  Slowly, the boy’s face brightened. “I could help.”

  Ciel smiled at me. “I bet there’s no gryphons back here.” She squeezed her brother’s hand and giggled as I grimaced.

  Now Wik hesitated. Before Spirefall, a Singer like him would have led the way into the passage. Now I remembered his temperament during the time he helped care for me at Lith—after I fell to Kirit in the Gyre. He’d have struck out against Dix too. She went against his sense of order. But now? After Laria and especially after Spirefall, he was all caution. He tested his knife. “We should find more weapons to take with us.”

  I touched my arm sheath. Two knives, though another had gone missing in the gryphon attack. It was enough. I was beginning to feel as eager as the twins to see what was down the tunnel.

  “Maybe there are weapons back there,” Ciel said, leaning in the direction she wanted to go: towards the tunnels. “Maybe a whole cave full.”

  That idea seemed to draw Wik’s attention. He coaxed a littlemouth onto his shoulder and stepped into the tunnel.

  The walls sparkled here and there along our path, pricked to light by the littlemouths’ glow. I stepped closer and saw more metal shards. Brass and other metals too. My fingertips brushed time-dulled edges, crusts of bone growth over other shapes, barely distinct now. The objects were so old, some were merely ghosts of themselves.

  Many were unreadable, at least by me. They could have been records of trades or gambling debts, awful jokes, or important formulas. It was impossible to tell. No matter what, the walls held what Doran had wanted most for the city: knowledge that the past had failed to share with the future.

  Ciel ran a finger down the markings. Puffs of dust rose. “What does it say?” She looked around the turn as if expecting to see an ancient artifex, or the thieves from her song.

  Wik leaned close, trying to see in the blue light. “It looks familiar. But only just.”

  Who were the people who grew this cave and the hidden tunnels here?

  Bone overgrowths made the tunnel hard to navigate, especially in places where a plate had fallen to the floor. Still, we moved carefully through the tunnel’s turns. It felt as though we walked the tower’s perimeter, at the very least, sheltered within tunnels of bone. Ceetcee had no need to worry about tunnel collapses.

  Ciel disappeared around a bend, taking Moc and much of the light with her. Wik still hummed quietly behind me.

  The twists and turns continued to remind me of Lith, the broken tower barely visible above the city, where the lawless had for generations carved passages and hiding places through the bone. The feverish days I’d spent there, nursed by Elna and Tobiat with Wik’s help, were seared into my memory.

  “I never said thank you,” I said over my shoulder. “I should have.”

  Wik looked at me from under heavy brows. I remembered his strength, fighting at my side during Spirefall. His Lawsmarker-draped shoulders at Bissel. Conclave. We’d been on opposite sides only when Doran’s politics demanded it.

  No, that wasn’t true. When I’d allowed Doran’s politics to change me.

  Wik walked closer, still behind me. “After the market riots, when the city turned against us, I felt unworthy of the city. I let your council pile Laws on me and tell me I’d wronged the towers. Meantime, you saved Moc and Ciel.”

  “But I wouldn’t have, if Kirit hadn’t led the way.”

  He walked slower. “When they carried me to Laria, when I saw”—his breath caught, then rushed from his nose—“Rumul. Barely alive.” He drew another breath. “When I guessed Dix used the riots to destabilize the council and turned the towers against themselves, I lost hope again. And then, there you were. We fought together again, after all this time.”

  I squirmed, uncomfortable. “We’re stronger when we fight together.”

  “You could have left us there with Dix, at Laria, but you didn’t,” Wik said.

  “You could have told Dix about what we’d found in the clouds, but you didn’t.”

  He held out a tattooed, callused hand, and I clasped it for a moment, feeling tension ease, but not dissipate. How did battle wounds heal? Did the wind forgive the towers for striking it, or did it just keep going?

  Somehow we needed to figure that out, even Doran, or we’d die in this cave.

  Ciel and Moc began arguing ahead, and we sped to catch up, passing old carvings on the walls: A shoulder and head, a pair of wings. A crowd running. A bone eater.

  By the time we reached the twins, the glow had intensified. Littlemouths speckled the tunnel walls and clung thick around the mouth of another alcove.

  After days in the dim clouds, the brightness made us squint.

  “It hurts my eyes,” Moc said.

  “Can you calm them?” I whispered to Ciel.

  She shrugged. “How? Any rhythm I make, they copy. Even when I talk. Watch.” She hummed a pattern, and the walls pulsed with light. She thought for a moment. “Viridi sometimes calmed the skymouths.” She made a shushing sound. Like a mother to her child.

  The littlemouths dimmed, but didn’t go out. We could see easier in the half-light. Around the cave, littlemouths clustered along the ceiling and down the walls like bright bats. In a corner, a clutch of eggs glowed softly, tiny dots on the wall.

  “Oh,” said Moc. “That’s where they come from.”

  When we stepped inside the room, we could no longer hear echoes down the tunnelways. Ciel’s soft shushing overtook us. The high ceiling and the littlemouths clustered across it reminded me of a night sky, close to Allmoons. Ciel and Moc tiptoed around the space, eyes on the ceiling. None of us wanted to break the quiet spell the room cast.

  The littlemou
ths had been so bright, I almost missed the carvings and panels embedded in the walls. As the blue faded, Wik pointed to them, his jaw slack with surprise.

  “Moc, would you get Djonn? The others too,” I asked. “Tell Ceetcee it opens up back here.” My fingers brushed brass engravings, felt detailed carvings beneath my touch. So many panels. Many codexes’ worth. More than anyone could carry.

  I trailed my hand lightly over the wall, careful not to disturb any littlemouths. Five more plates. Images of tools with uses I couldn’t fathom. Left behind here, as if the occupants had more than they needed.

  “Nat,” Ciel whispered. The light dimmed around us. “This is important, isn’t it?” She squeezed my hand and began shushing again. The glow returned to the cave.

  I felt the sound course through me, through all of us. Shhhh. The world slowed in the cave. It would be all right. Relief and something more washed over me. Hope. We would go on, somehow. “This is important. This is the true heart of the city.”

  Footsteps echoed down the tunnel. Djonn arrived slightly breathless, Aliati at his side. When he saw what the walls contained, he froze. “So many.” He, too, reached out to touch.

  “What tools do you have?” I asked Djonn, my voice steadier than I felt. I hoped he kept more tools on his person than flint. I wanted to take each plate back to the city and make sure it was safe for the next generation. I understood now, how Doran might have felt when Dix brought him that first plate after Spirefall.

  Djonn passed me an awl, then walked in a circle, staring.

  With Djonn’s metal tool, I began chipping at the bone, trying to pry a plate loose.

  “Don’t,” Ciel said. She stopped my hand.

  “We need it.” These were our history, and, if Doran was right, our future. They would be our proof to the city above that there was lost knowledge down here. That the Singers hadn’t been wrong, but they hadn’t been right either. They might help us topple Dix and let us return to the city.

  My fingers itched to see what was on each plate’s other side. To search for a key. A way to translate them.

  More footsteps and then Doran’s hand on my shoulder. He pulled me aside, then pried at a plate with his fingers. “We must recover these.”

  “You can’t,” Ciel said again, putting her hand over Doran’s. “The plates are keeping the room from filling in. Look at the tunnel if you don’t believe me. It’s just like the poles used to sculpt the cave. This place isn’t ours anymore.” She pointed at the littlemouths, at the eggs on the wall. “If you move the plates, they’ll have nowhere to go.”

  She was right. Without the carvings placed as they were, the living bone core would eventually fill this space. The tunnels too. We couldn’t remove them without damaging the cave, and the littlemouths that lived and bred here.

  I put the awl in my pocket, but Doran kept prying.

  Finally, Wik reached out and stayed his hand.

  “These plates belong to the city,” Doran said. “We can take them back above the clouds. Regain the towers’ support.”

  “Everyone in the city should see these, and benefit from them,” I agreed, stealing Doran’s wind. “But not at the littlemouths’ expense. Everyone will know of it. We’ll make sure they do.”

  I hoped Doran would listen. Would not demand agreement with his plan. He’d seen the downfall of his demands for loyalty. Had he changed enough?

  Doran frowned, then shrugged agreement. He let the plates be.

  * * *

  Five of us—Doran, Djonn, Aliati, Wik, and I—looked long and hard at the plates while Moc and Ciel explored. When we’d circuited the room, I touched the last brass square on the wall. It felt rougher than the others, the diagrams less careful. The drawings were of weapons, I realized, much like the weapons we used in the city now: a bow, a spear. Jagged cuts marked the outlines of skymouths and bone eaters.

  The skillful hand that had etched the glorious tools on the plates Djonn and Doran carried was long lost by the time this plate was carved. Fear radiated from its surface. Especially rough was the etched winged figure, flying, lifting someone without wings up and away, so much like carvings of Singers in the Spire. Looking closer, I saw a shadowed indentation, like an etching had been made, then polished away.

  More figures had once stood behind the pair. Gone now.

  Hiroli’s and Ceetcee’s voices echoed down the passage from the alcove, growing louder and more agitated. The littlemouths’ slow pulse began to dull and wink out. Wik hummed, and the littlemouth on his shoulder glowed, tentatively, but none of the others. We worked our way back to the alcove, and found another alcove panel open, on the left-hand side. Ceetcee wasn’t in the main cave. Her shouts came from beyond the next alcove.

  I stepped through the small opening and followed it around another curve, my hand brushing the rough bone wall. Wik followed me, with the others close behind. We found Ceetcee glaring at Hiroli before another, smaller room.

  Ceetcee held a small marrow-sucked bone like a weapon. She lowered it when she saw us. “She has a bird—a kavik! I found her back here, feeding it.”

  Hiroli clutched the small black bird. She tucked a handful of graincake in her robe. She’d had food with her the entire time.

  “Where did you get it?” I meant the bird. I knew whipperlings would go to sleep tucked in a robe or a pocket. That kavik looked like it wanted to chew its way out of her hands.

  “I stole it from Laria. Fed it some of my dinner.” She’d given it Dix’s drug. That made sense.

  “She wants to send a message to the city,” Ceetcee said.

  Hiroli glared at her, then waved her worry away. “I didn’t say I wanted to talk to the city. I said we need medicine we can’t get down here. We need food and supplies.”

  “That’s as good as telling Dix’s guards where we are,” Ceetcee said. “We don’t need the city. We can use what’s down here: ferns and lichens heal wounds. Aliati knows how.”

  At mention of medicine, my worries returned, the magic of discovery fading. Illness, dampness. Would a mythical Corwin come for us too?

  “If we wait here for the blackwings to find us, surviving on leaves, we’ll be easy to defeat,” Hiroli said. “The air isn’t good for you, Ceetcee. Nor the food. It’s not good for anyone.”

  “We have the gryphon, and we’ll find more food,” I said, although I saw Hiroli’s point. She hadn’t told anyone about the kavik. Why not?

  “There’s no time. We aren’t staying here,” Hiroli countered. “You’re looking at carvings and etchings you can’t read, from people long gone. They mean nothing, and Dix wants them. Let’s offer her some to get help for our friends.”

  Now she spoke cloud Treason. “Councilor, you’re out of order. You’ve not seen what we’ve been,” I said. “You were—”

  “Trapped at Laria, by Dix,” she finished. “Yes, I remember clearly.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’d been waiting for you to return, as ordered! Did you think I went there by choice?”

  Doran touched her shoulder. “Nat doesn’t think that. No one does.”

  But Hiroli’s words struck a chord, and the note was sour. I’d left her at risk on Bissel while we argued with Doran on Varu. Now she was right. I was worried about Ceetcee and Beliak. I wanted to get back to the city more than I could say. Hiroli hadn’t been through what we’d been through. But she’d had her own trials. “Dix would destroy this place to get her hands on the plates. And she’d want more than the plates—she’d want the artifex too.”

  “She can get another artifex,” Doran said, patting Djonn’s shoulder. “This one is ours.”

  Djonn stepped away from Doran’s hand rather than answer. I didn’t like Doran’s possessiveness either.

  “You’ve been back here, exploring, when we should be planning. But you missed a whole alcove,” Hiroli said. “You’ll understand better once you see it.”

  Hiroli had been exploring too, without us.

  “What is it?” I said. I had to duck low to
get into the alcove Hiroli had found; the entrance was tiny. When I made it through, I could see shadows clustered along the back wall.

  My eyes adjusted to the dim light and I moved closer. The piles were bones, left where they’d fallen. Not normal undercloud fare, either. These were human bones.

  I recoiled, and Hiroli whispered, “Shocking, isn’t it. So many bodies.” She was right. We didn’t keep our dead in the city. In the past days, I’d seen more bodies than I should have in a lifetime. But I returned to the room, curious.

  Each pile’s skull had a hole in it, or broken ribs, as from an arrow or a knife blade. People had fought and died here. Judging by the dust, a very long time ago.

  Around the room, rough overgrowth marked places where brass plates and rods had been pulled from the walls. I saw outlines of four plates. Touched the plate in my satchel. Djonn had one also. Doran two. Four had fallen into the clouds. Had all of these and more been pried from this room long ago?

  Without the metal to restrict growth, the room was slowly growing together, pushing on the bone piles and absorbing them in the process.

  Wik waited outside, peering in; he was too broad-shouldered to enter. “This is what I meant by dangerous. The plates—they can be stolen or taken by force. Songs and Laws get memorized and passed up. No one kills for them,” he said.

  Only Hiroli’s small footprints and my larger ones marred the dusty floor. But Wik was right. In this cave—the nest of thieves—the builders hadn’t left their metal behind. They hadn’t abandoned the littlemouth chamber when they’d risen up the towers.

  They’d died in its defense.

  28

  THE TOWERS

  “Who were they?” I asked the cave.

  Aliati came up behind us. “They weren’t scavengers.” Wik, who’d been staring at the skeletons dissolving into the city, jumped, startled by her voice.

  Some bones were grown into the floor, the city taking them back in a slow process. What had happened to them? “How do you know they weren’t scavengers?” I asked her.

  Aliati said, “They died here. They made a home and they died in it. That’s not what scavengers do.” There was a note of admiration in her voice.