Cloudbound

by Fran Wilde

  “Ciel,” Moc said, turning to see that she too stared up, stunned.

  His voice startled the walls. A flight of bats peeled away and went screeching and wheeling up the tower’s center.

  I’d fallen deep into that void once—although nowhere near this deep.

  I’d climbed into its ruins and tried to steal its secrets. Now Ciel turned a slow circle, taking in the carvings, the empty void, but not understanding.

  Moc whispered again. “Ciel, we’re home.”

  We’d found the Gyre’s edge, deep in the Spire’s depths.

  And from back down the tunnel, we could hear Ceetcee calling our names.

  The bats disappeared into the tower’s upper reaches. Ciel moved slowly, reaching out a hand to touch the carved walls. Bone had spread into deep cuts and erased lighter marks, but outlines were still visible. Her hand came away white with bone dust, reversed, blurred imprints of the same symbols and marks from the littlemouth cave, interspersed, higher up, with a few marks much more familiar.

  I saw, too, carvings of people working in our meadow. They bent over strange mechanisms; unfurled familiar—if simpler—wings. They wove a plinth between the towers, just as I’d imagined. But the carvings stopped well before the symbols.

  By the time Singer script appeared on the walls, the carvings were entirely gone.

  Ciel touched each one, whispering their names for me, “Knife. Wing. Challenge. Arrow.”

  “You see how they once all worked together?” I said, pointing at the meadow, the carvings. “And how it ceased?”

  Behind us, cold air expanded, and the dim light from above disappeared entirely. Ciel’s littlemouth pulsed, alarmed.

  A crash echoed down the Gyre. I searched the darkness for bone eaters. Instead, an enormous piece of rotten netting drifted down, followed by shards of bone from above.

  Ceetcee had been right to worry, even if she’d been wrong about the tower’s name. “The Spire’s too unstable. We have to go.”

  I pulled Ciel away from the wall and pushed her towards the tunnel. Dragged Moc with us as more bone continued to fall. We scrambled back through the tunnel, Ceetcee’s shadow growing visible as we drew closer. She was sheltering within the tight space of the windgate. Outside the gate, rain fell again, big drops by the sound of it, landing on the meadow. A chill blew through the open gate. “This isn’t Naza,” I said, thinking how she and Aliati would have to change their maps, wondering what else we might find in the towers.

  Ceetcee ignored my news, turning from the gate and pointing at the sky. “Nat! Look!”

  Though the sky had darkened and a cold wind blew across the meadow, the sounds weren’t from rain at all. High above, winged shadows passed overhead.

  Message chips dropped to the meadow floor, bound in ones and twos.

  29

  PROMISE

  “They’ve found us.” I skidded down the bonefall, causing a small collapse. “They’re coming!” We’d need arrows and spears. Those were in the cave I’d just left. I scrambled back up.

  Ceetcee tugged at my sleeve, drawing me back from the cave entrance. “Wait. They could be strewing the chips everywhere near where we disappeared. They don’t know how far down we are or where, exactly, any more than we do.” That was true. She’d made her best guess with the map, but I knew she’d guessed wrong.

  Moc climbed the ridge wall and peered over the side, into the depths. “They’re falling out there too. Ceetcee’s right. They don’t know where we are yet.” Ciel trailed him, picking up chips and throwing them, furious.

  I fished a message strand from the branch of a fern. The three white bone chips strung from a blue silk cord hung small and vivid against the dusky green and deep brown branch. The marks on them read REWARD FOR TRAITORS, for those who might seek us, and YOUR CRIMES WON’T BE WEIGHED WITH THEIRS, to those among the cloudbound who might return to the city without prejudice—Doran, Hiroli, Aliati, and Djonn. Both groups might turn us over to the blackwings. SURRENDER was aimed at the rest of us.

  Across the meadow, chips gleamed white from where they’d fallen in the vegetation, looking like skyblind eyes. Most were Lawsmarkers with the sigils for Treason and War.

  Even if we hadn’t been discovered yet, the blackwings were too close. We would be found. Did we need to flee again or to make a stand? I didn’t know yet.

  Kirit would want to fight. Wik and the twins too. Hiroli would flee. With my family here, I wanted to do both: run and fight.

  We sped back across the meadow, ignoring the nettle stings. At the other side, Aliati, Doran, and Hiroli stood looking up.

  Hiroli held several chips in her hands. She absently ran her thumb over one.

  “Come on,” I said as we passed them. “We’ve got to go.”

  Aliati took Ceetcee’s arm and helped her up to the ledge. She’d tucked one of the markers behind her wingstrap. None of the rest of us even had our wings on yet. She was preparing too.

  “Run or fight?” she asked me. The metal hoop in her ear swung back and forth.

  Doran half blocked her way into the cave. “Or deal,” he said. He raised his eyebrows, asking the question, would you?

  “Deal? Do you expect Dix to keep a promise?” Aliati shook her head, laughing. “Maybe to you, but not to Kirit or Nat. Probably not to you either, actually.”

  We edged our way past him. Farther along the tunnel, Kirit yelled, angry and fierce. “You can’t make that decision for all of us!”

  We rounded a curve to find Kirit and Wik standing close, Hiroli just beyond them. They were past the small alcove with the bones. Beside them, Djonn leaned against a wall.

  “Kirit,” Hiroli said warmly, her hands crossed on her chest, “I’m not making decisions for you. I’m making my own decision. It’s clear we can’t stay here to starve in peace.” She looked at me darkly. “It’s only a matter of time before they really find us.”

  “You don’t know that!” Ceetcee said. “They want us to panic. We’re doing a great job of it.”

  “We should have a vote on what we should do,” Doran said.

  A vote. He would start that again here? “There’s no council in the clouds.”

  Doran frowned and tilted his head like a gryphon. “I think that’s been obvious for some time. You’ve been making too many decisions on the wing, Nat, from the failed attack at Laria onwards. When you should be preparing, you’ve been exploring. You’ve got wounded, children. Ceetcee. Djonn. Things could go downtower so fast.”

  “Don’t undercut him,” Wik said. “He’s doing fine.” I was grateful.

  Ceetcee seethed. “We can take care of ourselves.” While Moc muttered from behind me, “We won’t give up.”

  “I agree,” Doran began, his palms out, pleading. “I want consensus.”

  “You can fight,” Hiroli interrupted. “But for how long? You have no wings, Moc. And how long can you keep running?” She looked at Ceetcee. With each question, she took a step backwards. “I’d rather live.” Then she turned and ran for the cave, for the fire where Beliak slept. Where Ceetcee had tied up the kavik.

  We chased her, squeezing through the bottleneck and out the alcove, into the cave. We were fast, but she was faster.

  Knotting a message skein around the bird’s claw with one hand and her teeth, she swung out to the ledge and started climbing the tower’s overgrown ledges.

  “Hiroli!” Doran shouted. “Stop!” He grabbed his wings from the stack where they’d been drying. Struggled to get them on. I did the same, while the others ran to the cave mouth.

  Only Aliati, who’d donned her wings the minute they were dry, could take a running leap from the cave and get in the air before Hiroli let the kavik go. I drew my bow on the ledge and tried to sight the bird, but it was already too high, and flapping hard. Aliati couldn’t find a gust strong enough, nor one going in the right direction. She circled back around and plucked Hiroli from the tower wall instead.

  “What did you do?” she said, shaking the yo
ung woman over the ledge. “You had a message already written. What did it say?”

  Hiroli refused to speak, even after Aliati dropped her on the cave floor. She sprawled there, staring at us, panting from the climb.

  Wik knelt beside her, gripping her upper arm. “Why did you do it?”

  She smiled, slowly. “I want to sleep on a dry tier, and eat real food. I doubt I’m the only one. But I’m the one Dix will reward.”

  Suddenly everyone was shouting all at once, but no one shouted louder than I. “You were Ezarit’s apprentice. You know how she died. Would you hand us all over to her murderer?”

  Hiroli’s smile faded. “If it got me out of this cave and back into the city? Yes.”

  My breath caught. “We saved you at Laria.” And she betrayed us beneath the clouds. “What did you write?”

  Hiroli had the grace to look me in the eye when she said, “I told them where we were. I told them we had the artifex, and the lighter-than-air plate. And that there were many more plates here besides.”

  * * *

  We bound Hiroli’s hands behind her and took her to the small cave with the bones, though she cried to be let out. Wik tied her ankles together and slipped the tether through the eye sockets of a skull. “One move,” he said, “and I’ll drop you into the clouds.”

  I’d been thinking the same thing, without the “one move” part. A look at Doran told me he felt the same.

  “Isn’t dropping people what you’re good at, Singer Wik?” Hiroli shouted, so loud we could hear her in the main cave. “You all are cloudfood when the blackwings get here, but Dix will take me home. How do you like that?”

  Ciel and Moc huddled by the alcove, looking down the tunnel to where Wik stood. Ciel leaned her head on her brother’s shoulder.

  Doran paced the cave, while I knelt by Djonn. The artifex was pale, his hands shook. “She told them where to find me,” he said. “She told them that I took the plates.”

  The cave grew so quiet, we could hear more Lawsmarkers land on the slope. They sounded like slaps now.

  Aliati held out a hand to the artifex. Her face was drawn up tight as a bowstring. “You’re not going back. I promise. That kavik might not even make it out of the clouds.”

  “But what if it does?” Doran asked. “What if it makes it all the way back to Dix? What then?”

  “Nobody needs to hear that right now,” Kirit said. She sat on the floor, against the cave wall, sharpening her new glass-tooth knife.

  “I respectfully disagree,” Doran said. “We need to say the words. We need to plan, to get ahead of this if we can. We need to send another bird, with an offer for a truce. We need to appeal to what Dix wants most.”

  He barely had time to finish before Aliati gripped his robes and shook him. I pulled her away. Doran hadn’t sent the bird. He was trying to help. But he was wrong.

  “Respectfully,” I said, “we don’t need to send another bird. We need to run.”

  Doran looked to where Beliak sweated, half awake, his head in Ceetcee’s lap. She stroked his temples, trying to soothe him. “With Beliak that ill?” he said, “And two wingless among us, against blackwings? We have to deal. We cannot fight.”

  My fists clenched to keep them from shaking with anger. “She’ll throw the rest down, first chance she gets.” And Elna too.

  Once more, I imagined I stood on the council platform, with the wingless Singer I’d been ordered to carry to the city’s edge. Once more, I held Viridi while she died in my arms. We couldn’t let another Conclave happen.

  Doran spread his hands. “Given enough time to talk to other towers, we can stop Dix from doing that. Your attack let me begin that process, Nat. There are others aware of the danger now. People pay attention to good leaders. More will figure out that Dix isn’t one. But to do that, to get there, we need to reach out to her before she reaches down to us with a flight of blackwings.”

  Wik had come to the alcove entrance, not far from where Hiroli was bound, but close enough to speak. “He’s not wrong. But what can you offer Dix, if it isn’t the artifex? Or the Singers?”

  Now Doran smiled. “We’ll offer her the towers. Tell her she needs to see for herself what we found.”

  Stunned silence. Ceetcee stared, slack-jawed. Kirit put down the knife. It was a brilliant trade, a terrible trade.

  But Aliati said, “This can’t belong to her. This place belongs to the city, to everyone. It’s a scavengers’ sanctum.” And it was, because she named it so.

  “What do you want most, Aliati?” Doran said. He touched Djonn’s shoulder. “For your friend to be able to work, to be safe and free from pain?” She nodded, though she looked like she didn’t want to. “And Kirit wants to kill Dix.”

  Kirit stared at him. “Yes.”

  “What if I could make those things happen? What if we could get medicine for Beliak, and Ceetcee could give birth in Densira’s hightower, as she’d planned?” Doran’s voice cracked. He was working very hard to control his emotions, but I knew that voice. He’d already decided this was the action he wanted to take.

  “In return for our cooperation? For letting you negotiate with Dix?” Slowly I stretched the muscles in one hand, then the other. They ached from clenching them.

  Doran bowed his head and clasped his hands. “For trusting me, yes. For giving me Maalik and letting me buy us a truce, to gain us more time.” He wove a net of promises around us and drew the neck of it tight. In the dim cave, every eye was on him. And Doran relished it.

  I banged my winghook on the ground, loudly, trying to cast off his promises. “What if Dix brings a flight of blackwings with her? How do you keep her from doing that?”

  “That part is simple,” Doran said. “We tell her we’ll destroy the plates and kill the artifex if she brings more than two.”

  This time, I didn’t pull Aliati away from him. This time, she hit him hard.

  30

  SURRENDER

  Doran reeled, rubbing his cheek.

  Surprisingly, Djonn was the one who reached for Aliati’s robe and gently pulled her back. “Listen,” he said. “It’s what will get her attention.”

  The artifex sat by the hastily built guano fire. Smoke blew around the cave, making our eyes water. “It’s too damp down here, too much pressure.” He chewed a fingernail. “I need to go back to the city.”

  Aliati squeezed Djonn’s left hand. “We can find another way.” She glared at Doran, his face red where she’d slapped him.

  Doran put his hand on Djonn’s shoulder. “He’s in tremendous pain. He’d been holding himself together for days by the time he helped you attack Laria, and then we got chased farther down here. His muscles are seizing up. He’s barely slept. The damp and his own twisting spine conspire to torture him. If we can get him back above the clouds, we can find him medicine that will at least ease the pain.”

  “Even if that means working for Dix and hurting your friends?” Aliati kept her eyes on Djonn, ignoring Doran.

  “I don’t want to work for her,” Djonn said. “But it might be the key to us—to some of us—getting back into the city. To sabotaging her. Like Doran wants.” He looked at Aliati. “You came to rescue me. I can rescue you too.”

  She pressed her palms to her eyes, groaning. “I don’t want you to rescue me.” Then she turned to the group. Took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “If we decide to make Dix think we’re willing to do this, I will be the one in charge of the knife,” she said. “The one Doran intends to hold against Djonn’s throat. No one else.”

  “Absolutely,” Doran agreed. “I’d planned that you would.”

  Aliati remained standing, staring at him, while Doran turned to Kirit next. She barely lifted her head when she nodded.

  I couldn’t keep quiet. “How will you make good on your promises, Doran? Hiroli, tied up, has more power in the city than you do right now.”

  Doran knelt on the floor and spread the Justice map out. He reached in his pocket and drew out a handful of to
wer markers, including several Spires. “Because Aliati and I will meet Dix in the meadow. We’ll hold back the things she wants most: Djonn, the lighter-than-air.” He raised his eyebrows, looking around the cave.

  Doran put a marker down between Varu and Naza and looked at me. “You, Wik, and Kirit will be stationed on the bridge and nearby towers, ready if Dix pulls any tricks. Kirit will have a clear shot if something goes wrong.”

  “And if it goes right?” This was the first time Ceetcee had spoken.

  “If it goes right, then we go back to the city. To the northwest, where we’ll be protected, among friends.” Doran smiled. “Macal, Wik’s brother, is the towerman at Mondarath.”

  “For how long?” I asked.

  “We’ll have to move fast once we’re up there,” Doran admitted. “But getting up there is half the battle.” He frowned. “We’ve spoken too long. We must act. Is everyone agreed?”

  Djonn nodded. Aliati whispered, “Agreed.”

  Kirit touched her knife tip to the bone floor. “Yes.”

  “Agreed,” Ceetcee whispered, looking at me sadly, then at Beliak. “He’ll get better, faster, in the city.”

  Clouds. “You can’t possibly trust Dix to keep her word,” I said. “If she agrees to this at all.”

  Doran frowned, but took a deep breath and clasped my shoulder. “Nat, I want us all to be in agreement. I don’t trust Dix now, any more than you. We’ll hold back those things she wants most until she makes good on our treaty. And I’ll make one more request, for proof that Elna is safe.”

  Good news and bad: I wanted that proof desperately, but I didn’t want to need proof. “I want her taken to Mondarath. Put under Macal’s protection.”

  Doran nodded, tightening his grip on my shoulder. “We’ll do that.”

  Finally, I gave in. Doran was determined, and even Ceetcee wanted to try negotiating. So I knelt by Beliak’s side and watched Maalik nestle in his roost in the crook of Beliak’s arm.

  Sweat beaded Beliak’s brow.

  While I fed the bird a few remaining crumbs of Hiroli’s graincake, Ceetcee and I took Beliak’s hands in ours. “We won’t let you—” I couldn’t say the word. My jaw moved, but no sound came out. Ceetcee squeezed our hands harder.