Cloudbound

by Fran Wilde

  Settling to my knees, I tore a strip of silk from my robe and bound up my right arm. The bolt had gone clean through. When I secured the silk bandage, tucking in the edges, I screamed. Now I knew I wasn’t dead. Death couldn’t possibly hurt this much.

  I crawled away from where I’d landed, bled, and been sick. If I could get to the bone wall, perhaps I could climb up. Now that I wasn’t dead, I needed to figure out how to get home. Back to my family. Back into the clouds, and then the city.

  A shadow loomed over me, blocking the sun. Foul gray robes, streaked with blood and dirt flapped before my eyes. Two hands, one holding a sharp glass-tooth knife, the other extended to me.

  “On your wings, Nat,” Kirit croaked. She knelt beside me, her eyes wild. “You didn’t catch me when I fell.”

  “Mercy on your wings, Skyshouter.” Blood matted her ear and traced her tattoos. I must have looked similar. “You didn’t catch me either.”

  “Where are we? Where is the wind?” Her questions came fast.

  I got to my knees and steadied myself by leaning on her shoulder. I had no answers for her.

  For a time, the world narrowed to the sound of our breathing and coughing.

  Above us, the clouds formed a dark, thick sky that devoured the bone wall. I could barely remember the white towers and blue sky of home. Beneath our feet, the thick gray-green surface was flat, but soon it became folds and valleys, then drops into darkness. Beyond it, I could see the red, dusty surface I’d spotted in my fall, a drop of ten tiers at least.

  We stared at our surroundings until the sun rose above the clouds and the light grew tolerably dim again. Everywhere we looked, the terrain was the same, gray and green below us, bone wall to our right, red dust beyond: a landscape of ridges and creases, steep drops and rolling expanses.

  A weak breeze ruffled my hair. I held my fingers up to test it. I could barely call it wind.

  A few steps from us, my wings lay crumpled, a spar jammed into the ground. Ribbons of shredded blue and sepia silk hung from the frame. Kirit’s wings had fared better, with only a few tears. But even if our wings had been whole, there was not enough breeze to lift us from the ground. No wind we could ride through the cloud and back up to the city.

  We’d fallen from the cloud. We were trapped below it.

  * * *

  We got to our feet and walked, slipping on refuse and grime. Once, my foot sank deep into an oozing crust, to a dank pool below. The rancid smell made me ill. Kirit grabbed my wounded arm and dragged me out.

  I screamed in pain.

  “If it hurts, you are lucky.” She was right.

  But fear bubbled in my gut. We’d fallen. We weren’t dead, but we were lost, and those above were lost to us. “Are there songs for this?”

  Kirit shook her head. Kept walking. Now and then, she looked up at the clouds. Then out across the horizon, her lips pressed tight together as if to stifle a scream. She twisted a ribbon of wingsilk between her fingers. I caught myself flexing my uninjured hand—grasping air in empathy, but Kirit didn’t notice. She limped and stumbled. She slowed, then knelt, coughing.

  “We have to keep going.” I pulled on her arm, trying to lift her one-handed, without wings, or a good breeze to fill them.

  “Where do we go?” Her lips were cracked.

  We would go to the bone wall. “Up. We’ll go up. We’ll find a place high enough to launch you from. You’ll fly for help.”

  Even as I said the words, I wished I could go up instead of her. She had a working set of wings. I didn’t. Still, the thought that we’d fly again? That was enough to keep us both moving. We saw a broken wingframe, and beneath it, one of Dix’s guards. They’d landed so hard it was impossible to tell whether they were male or female, old or young.

  We muttered Remembrances over them and pointed skywards. We kept walking. The sun descended below the cloud wall, and the world steamed around us. We dragged our feet. We didn’t look at the horizon, not much, the sky not at all. We kept our eyes on the ground, so we wouldn’t trip. Neither one of us asked if we’d seen anyone else. If I’d asked and Kirit had said yes, it would have broken me. If she’d said no, that would have meant we were alone with the dead.

  The sun passed below the horizon, trailing orange and purple across the sky. The air cooled around us. The dim light felt like we were back in the undercloud again, except with solid ground beneath our feet. We could cover more distance now, before the sun came back.

  If we stopped to watch the horizon, we’d never find a way high enough for her to try to launch.

  The purple light faded. I dreaded stopping to sleep, though I knew we needed it. I didn’t want to slow enough for understanding of what had happened to catch up to us. To overwhelm us. So we kept walking in the near dark.

  Ahead, in the tip of the bone wall’s shadow, a darker shadow: Black wings. Gray robes. Kirit gave a cry and ran. “Wik!”

  The Singer cradled his arm. Deep scrapes crossed the tattoos on his face and hands. He stared at us, at the thick clouds above. “To fall so far,” he whispered.

  Kirit and I lifted him gently. With pieces of my wings, we splinted his arm. As we helped him, his daze cleared, and he looked at our surroundings, confused. “Where is the city?”

  My eyes scanned the green ridges, the red dust beyond. I had no answer for him.

  “We’ll find it,” Kirit said. “Can you walk?”

  He tried to stand, and when he had his balance, we moved slowly on, towards the bone wall. Once, we might have glided that distance without a thought. Instead we walked until we couldn’t any longer. We’d barely drawn closer to the wall when Kirit knelt on the ground. “Enough. Rest.”

  Somewhere above us, the northwest had been attacked. The fledges, our friends and family were still in the midcloud. Elna—I did not want to rest. But my body would not listen. My legs wobbled and failed me. I settled next to Kirit on the ground.

  Wik groaned as he lowered himself beside us and hummed a song. It sounded familiar, like one Tobiat had taught us about long ago, but with a slightly different cadence. I remembered a few words. Go up, away, rise, and live.

  “What’s that from?”

  “‘The Bone Forest,’” he confirmed. “A very old song,” Wik said. “Singer archivists had been trying to figure out the mystery for years. Go up from what? What did our ancestors have to rise away from?”

  We looked at the bone walls rising as high as we could see, dark shadows of uneven ridges and spires on the end and side nearest us, thick towers grown together running its center and up into the cloud wall above. My eyes drifted closed, and I was powerless to stop exhaustion from pulling me down into sleep.

  I jerked awake when, below us, the surface seemed to move in one long roll. Kirit whimpered, groggy, and then sprang fully awake. A sound louder than any city rumble made us clap our hands to our ears. When it stopped, Wik had risen to his feet, on alert. He held his spear in his uninjured hand, ready to throw. Kirit clutched her remaining knife. But no enemy came. The ground continued to rumble softly beneath our feet for a long time afterward.

  “We might be about to find out what they had to fear,” I said. Nothing I’d ever hunted made a sound like that. Not even a bone eater. “Stay alert.”

  Wik handed me a water sack, half full. I gulped a mouthful, then spat mud and blood on the ground. Tried again, swallowing this time. Passed the sack to Kirit. As she drank, I tore another blue strip from my broken, bundled wings and we changed the bandage on my arm. Wik helped us both to our feet, wincing as we tried not to jostle his arm. We aimed ourselves now for one of the lower edge spires, hoping there would be an easy way to climb it.

  The landscape went on forever, and I felt certain that we’d walk the strange surface always. We’d finally come close to the edge of the bone wall, and we circled the thick ridge that surrounded it, looking for handholds, access.

  In the dark, I did not see where the ground dipped low, then fell away until I nearly walked right into it.


  “Careful.” Wik caught my good arm and steadied me, pointing. We could not see the chasm’s end. We stopped, not wanting to trip into another chasm, until sunrise pricked the horizon, then lit it orange and red. Warm air that promised another sweat-filled day replaced the cool night breeze.

  Far out on the horizon, silhouetted by the sunlight, three dark shadows moved, enormous. Puffs of dust rose in their wake, glittering red.

  “What are those?” I pointed.

  Wik shook his head. “I can’t tell from here. Too much dust.”

  I slid down a small incline on my backside, hoping to get closer to the chasm, so I might look over the edge.

  Wik slid beside me, trying to slow his descent with his feet and hand. I’d not thought to do so. When the dusty surface slickened with moisture, I began moving too fast and couldn’t stop myself. I slid farther and skidded off the edge. Despite Wik’s efforts, he tumbled after me, spilling into a dark ravine with a surprised grunt followed by a pain-filled groan.

  “Are you all right?” Kirit remained up above.

  We’d landed side by side on a pile of bones that shifted beneath us and pricked at our robes and skin. Skulls piled on long leg bones sucked clean of marrow, ribs. A large beak stuck point first from layers of smaller bones, barely a hand span from my leg. “We’re all right.”

  We picked our way carefully from the bonefall, back out into sunlight, and found our path blocked by another green ridge, thicker than any tower in the city.

  Wik turned to look up at Kirit, and then out at the horizon, his back to the wall. His hand shaded his eyes as he looked across the landscape. Broad yellow expanses of cartilage stretched out beside me, layer upon layer, and curved like a bone eater’s talons, their color much darker than tower bone. The edges and tips were chipped and peeling, ridged with mud. One moved, lifting slowly in the air.

  They weren’t like talons. They were talons.

  When the talon came back down, it pounded red dirt below, shaking us and throwing dust into the air.

  Behind Wik, the green wall moved. A section parted with a wet sound, revealing a smooth, liquid dome, tiers and tiers high. I stepped back as far as I could without falling farther. Tried to make sense of the whole from its pieces.

  The yellow orb, flecked with browns and greens each the size of a bone eater followed my movement. A dark iris grew larger and smaller as it tried to focus on me, on Wik.

  Kirit shouted from atop the ridge. The iris found her. One small edge of a monstrous jaw far below us grated against another. Supported on a pile of broken dirt and bone, the creature’s mouth moved back and forth, producing a grinding sound louder than anything, even thunder. A city roar was a whisper in comparison.

  I covered my ears again, saw Kirit cower and tumble towards us. Wik still faced the other direction, towards the sunrise. He hadn’t seen what we saw. Didn’t see Kirit fall. He didn’t see the giant yellow eye behind him, the corner nearest us seeping salty water, which now slowly blinked.

  Wik pointed a shaking hand to the horizon.

  I yanked him away from the eye, the jaw. We both lifted Kirit and retreated the way we’d come, but found we couldn’t climb back up the leathery ridge.

  “Move,” I whispered. “Now.”

  We slid away down another slope. The giant valley of bones we’d fallen into was only the beginning. We slipped farther, finding more skulls, a scapula.

  In the distance, the familiar sound of a bone eater’s screech pierced the air. That stopped the three of us in our tracks. We stood back to back, searching the morning for a serrated beak, the giant claws. None plied the midden for as far as we could see.

  When the dust of our fall cleared, I turned to look where Wik had been pointing, above.

  The distant shadows we’d seen on the horizon before were clearer now. The sun edged their forms in golden light: three enormous, dark shapes bristling against the bruised sky. Each kept a distance from the others that was nearly equal to their distance from us.

  All three moved slowly across the horizon, one monstrous foot, then the other, inexorable.

  Our own bones felt each step.

  The creatures’ thick necks lifted heads that swept back and forth, then dropped to the ground as bone eaters swooped near their heads and in their wake. Broad, curved backs supported ridges of bone that rose to brush the clouds, separating into towers and spires at their peaks.

  Only three spires on one of the backs pierced the clouds above. They were small, even at a distance, compared to what we knew.

  I pulled Kirit’s and Wik’s arms gently, moving them back to the nearest incline, and away from the red, dusty ground. We were safer up high. We needed to climb.

  Nothing in our songs, our carvings, or engraved on the plates we’d found in the clouds prepared us for what we were seeing.

  “The city,” I whispered. “It’s alive.”

  34

  JUSTICE

  Climbing single-handedly, and keeping well away from the city’s eye, I led our scramble up another leathery ridge, Wik pushed me from behind and pulled Kirit along.

  Each step threw dust in the air and filled our noses with thick scents that reminded me of trash-filled lower tiers and thrown-down garbage, but much, much worse. Strongest of all was the city’s own stink.

  The last thing any of us wanted was to fall in a pile of refuse that had collected on the city and surrounded its edges. What we wanted most was to be far above it.

  If only we had a cheap fiber rope. I calculated how many of Aliati’s tethers we’d need to climb back above the clouds and stifled a laugh that threatened to become a sob.

  Finally, we crested the ridge and could see the bone wall again, and across the creature’s shoulder too, almost to its flank. A long expanse of bone, too steep to scale without tethers, grips, or pitons, ran until it disappeared in the haze. We couldn’t climb here either.

  “It’s going to get dark again soon,” Wik said. The sun was just grazing the bone range that disappeared into the clouds. When the sun passed above the clouds, it would seem like a second sunset. “We should find shelter.” He pointed at a flock of bone eaters that dipped their long necks and dug in the midden heaps with their beaks. One lifted a large chunk of flesh covered with feathers—the body of another bone eater—and flew it to the city’s mouth. When it dropped the carrion, the city’s tongue slowly emerged and dragged the morsel in.

  They carry the dead away …

  The song came unbidden, sounding almost giddy as I remembered it.

  They eat the stars.

  They crack the bones.

  They feed the clouds below.

  Bone eaters fed the city, not the clouds. Aliati and Djonn would love to know this. Moc too. I hoped to be able to tell them.

  Far above, a cloud-hung meadow sheltered almost everyone I cared about. I shook my head to focus my thoughts and reeled, dizzy, with the motion.

  Wik had a different worry. “We don’t want one of those to surprise us and catch us, alive or dead.” The moment Wik said “or dead,” he looked like he wished he hadn’t. Still, I couldn’t have agreed more.

  “Do you think that’s what happened to the others? The guards?” Kirit said.

  Who’d been near us in the sky? Dix, almost certainly. She was as close to the cloud base as I had been. I kept expecting to find her, or what was left of her, as we walked. “I saw several guards fall,” I said, seeing again the spinning sky, the plummeting wings.

  “And Hiroli had Ciel. I hope they stayed above the cloud base,” Wik said. His forehead wrinkled as he frowned. “Maybe Ciel’s all right.”

  I thought back to the fall. I hadn’t seen Wik or Kirit when I tumbled, nor before that, when I struggled with Dix. “How did you fall? You were both higher than me, chasing blackwings.”

  Kirit laughed quietly. “We saw Dix attack you. We weren’t going to leave you there. We were coming to help. Then the wind disappeared.”

  They could have flown a
way and been free, but they hadn’t. Now they were stuck here too.

  With a sound like a swath of wet silk being pulled across bone, the city extended its tongue again near one of the bone eaters’ offerings and pulled it close. When it opened its mouth, other bone eaters took wing, bringing more food.

  The sound of the city digesting its meal was too much for us. We set out again, moving down an incline to another ravine, trying to get closer to where the bone ridge began, while staying far from the city’s head.

  The sun passed above the clouds. In the dim half-light, Wik tripped over a pile of refuse gathered along the city’s neck.

  This was more than trash and deadfalls from the towers above. Mud-covered, rusting metal, some of it pitted and filled with rainwater, had accumulated on the ridge. Some holes were big enough to bathe in. A long section of what looked like wall or balcony, made from mud-colored blocks, stuck from a pile of bird bones. The trash rose and fell with the city’s breath.

  From this height, we could still see shapes on the horizon; other cities, moving.

  “How long do you think the city’s sat here, letting the bone eaters feed it?”

  “Too long,” Wik said. His gaze took in the depth of the trash, the height of the bone ridge. “I doubt it could move now, with the towers it supports being so high.”

  The city rumbled, as if in reply. We could not keep our footing. Soot and dirt rained down on us from the towers above.

  “This isn’t safe,” I said when the rumbling stopped.

  Wik agreed. “We need to go back up, now.” He pointed to the farthest spur of bone. “Maybe there’s a way up over there.” Dark marks speckled a bone ridge in the distance, the height of which would eventually become the towers, the city. It looked more accessible than any ridge we’d seen yet.

  Our landscape had altered from sky and tower to a geography of claw and tongue, joint and limb.

  “I’m willing to walk there,” Kirit said. “Even if it takes a moon.” She began checking our weapons: four arrows left, and a bone knife. Two mostly repairable wingsets. One broken. Then she checked my wound.