by Fran Wilde
He touched my hand, gently. I shivered. We’d grown lean trying to save the city. We’d grow leaner still when it fell.
“We have to find a place to live,” Wik said. His eyes said much more: This isn’t living.
“We shouldn’t just start looking for other cities,” Nat said, coming up behind us with another armload of garbage and offal. “We need more time.”
I squinted at him. “Where would you have us go if the city dies?”
Nat’s forehead wrinkled. “What happens to the towers if it dies?” He pointed. “I know you have no family up there, Kirit, but I do. Ciel does!” He turned his back to us and stared at the sunset.
Ciel stared at Wik. “What about Macal? What about Moc?”
“I am thinking about them,” Wik said. Ciel threw up her hands.
“Nat.” I raised my hand to touch my friend’s arm. He pushed me away without looking at me.
“You haven’t cared about anything in so long that you can’t understand something beyond survival. And Wik’s willing to follow your lead.”
That hurt. Worse than a broken bone. Worse than losing my home. I cared so much I couldn’t breathe.
I wanted to heal the city, to put things back the way they’d been before I’d shattered the Spire.
A horrible thought began to dawn on me. “You think that I killed the city.”
Nat didn’t turn. “No.” He didn’t elaborate.
“Then what?” My voice echoed in my head. He did think that.
He turned his head slowly. “It’s not what I think. It’s what I know. I know we’re not going to leave them stranded up there, not knowing what’s going on.”
A bone eater crouched on a high-flung bone spur, staring at us. Feathered bulk and a sharp-hooked beak framed the hungry look in its eyes. It screeched. Ciel shivered, and my own skin crawled at the sound.
Could I kill it with a single shot? Recover the arrow? Could we eat it?
Survival, yes. But I had to think beyond that. To keeping my friends alive.
Other bone eaters, those that hadn’t flown away recently, perched darkly on the city’s spines, cackling. If I’d had a stronger bow, or more arrows, I might have taken a shot. The raptors were bigger than anything else we might find for the city, and for us. If they wouldn’t work, they could still help us. We were that desperate.
The city’s stomach rumbled beneath its skin. A belch issued from its nose and mouth, thickening the air with stench. The rumble jarred us to the ground, but it was a good sign. We had a fair span of time before it would need to eat again. And we’d have plenty of warning, as the city would regurgitate the bones it could not digest first.
The day grew warmer; the smell intensified.
I settled back into the city’s shadow, hoping for rest, but knowing sleep would bring worse dreams.
3
NAT, BELOW
When monsters clashed, the groundbound watched a city die.
I hated the ground, the absence of sky and wind. But truth was, I hated falling more.
On the ground, at least, there wasn’t far to fall.
Stranded below the heavy clouds, my feet fought the uneven earth. My lungs tightened in the dusty air. Frustration roiled my gut.
I hated feeling trapped. Especially when those I loved most remained high above. When they didn’t know the danger, and I could not reach them to help.
We were failing.
Failing felt worse than falling. Worse still because I wouldn’t fall this time; my family would.
* * *
As the distant, wounded city, Corat, collapsed to its knees, I wanted to fly from the ground. To break open the clouds. To go home.
Beside me, Ciel gasped as Corat wobbled. “That could happen to us.” She meant to them. To Moc, to Beliak and Ceetcee, to Elna and Aliati, trapped in the clouds.
“It won’t. We won’t let it,” I said, fast. But how could we stop it, trapped below the clouds? The ground had caught us. Fear had us too.
In the dark, the earth shook and we tasted dust on the air. I watched as Corat’s shadow slipped to one side, then crashed, and the dust boiled higher.
When the sun returned, Nimru drove forward and tore its claim from the fallen city’s side. We watched the smaller city die, fall, and be devoured.
We slept and woke and slept again. We would not give up.
At night, Ciel cried out in her sleep. Kirit and Wik whispered to each other. I huddled in my cloak alone.
In the next daylight, two bone eaters screeched and took to the skies around Nimru, followed by more of their flock. They swooped and darted, their cries filling the air.
Nimru lifted its head and turned slowly. Towards us.
“Nat, what’s happening now?” Ciel said wearily. The sun had passed far above the cloud, and the light had dimmed. The ground shook as Nimru stepped away from Corat. The bone eaters swooped, seeming to encourage it to hunt again.
The sun sank too slowly below the cloud. By the time the city had finished its turn and began moving inexorably towards us, a dozen diving bone eaters surrounded it. Its towers blocked the sun’s light.
“How many arrows do we have left?” Wik asked, watching Nimru focus on us.
How much time do we have? Time enough to run, surely, but we would abandon our home, our families, in doing so.
Ciel and I had carved more arrows when we could, but they lacked fletching. “Not nearly enough.” She ran to get her supplies. How much time?
Nimru’s bone eaters dove and swooped again.
The few bone eaters left on our city began to screech on their roosts. How many were there? A dozen? Ten?
Our city was immobile. Our bone eaters vastly outnumbered.
This was another way a city died.
Kirit paced the length of the city’s neck, looking as if she wanted to launch herself right at Nimru. Wik knelt on the city’s brow, right hand held out, measuring distance, time.
How much time did we have? Nimru began to pick up speed. Ciel set a finished, fletched arrow down. Picked up another one. Too slow.
I looked over the city’s side, at the tracks and divots around its body. This wasn’t the first time our city had been attacked. We’d just been too high up to notice before.
What had kept the city defended before?
The swirling black cloud around Nimru was my answer. Its bone eaters were close enough to call out now. Raucous. Maalik shivered against my chest.
Our city had once hosted a similar flock of bone eaters. We’d seen them. We’d helped them. And as we had, our city’s host of bone eaters had dwindled significantly. On the hunt for more food, better resources.
I groaned when I realized what we’d done.
“What?” Ciel said, trying to sharpen more arrows as we tracked the monster.
“Before we began helping, our city was ringed with bone eaters. They protected the city, even when it couldn’t move.”
“So?” Ciel said.
“I see ten bone eaters roosting on the city now. They’re not enough.” Not by far.
Wik turned to look at me. “We chased them away.”
We drove them away, and now we had to become like them. Fierce and daring. We had to defend the city from another of its kind. Without talons or claws. Tiny by comparison. Without wings.
Slowly, unstoppably, Nimru—one we’d watched cross the horizon, one we’d watched kill and eat another city so recently—was coming for us.
4
MACAL, ABOVE
Pulled apart, towers weakened, unless a bridge was tied.
Overhead, more of Mondarath’s guards circled, dark shadows in the air. They whistled “all clear.”
No blackwings had attempted to approach Mondarath since the dawn attack.
“Is it time, Magister Macal?” a child whispered, her grubby fist pushing at my arm. Her mother gone, her brother still asleep, she stood at my elbow wrapped in a light quilt and the taut stance of constant worry.
I’d di
sturbed her when I walked by a group of sleeping children, all tossed together like garden leaves after a storm.
“Soon,” I whispered, looking at the gray light around us. “Almost time.” The child smiled and returned to her bedding. Once I would have replied with certainty; now I was grateful she was too young to hear my hesitation.
I tucked the silk quilts tighter around her against the chill.
“Macal?” The same child again. All Magisters know the rule: answer one question and you are rewarded with a thousand more.
“What is it…” I struggled to remember this youngster’s name. “Maili?”
“Will they come?”
I tensed again, worried she meant blackwings. Maili was from a tower that had already been attacked.
But she continued, “The buyers?” She held in a fist a multicolored set of silk cords, braided. I knew they’d been her mothers’. Her chin was set. Determined.
“They’ll come. I’ll help you trade.” Across the tier, I saw Sidra rise, then begin to roll her sleeping mat and tuck it away, making room for the vendors who would arrive on the balcony. The young girl shook her head and gripped her braided silk cords tight.
“These are mine to trade by myself,” Maili said, stubborn.
In the near distance, Viit and Densira began to wake: oil lamps sparkled in the soft blue light. But the space between towers stayed empty. No one crossed the sky on colored wings to come to Mondarath yet. The smell of smoke grew. And the young girl, her parents missing, made ready for the market.
For moons, we’d waited, barricaded tight in the towers of the northeast, holding fast to our laws, our songs. We’d waited for order to return, and we’d grown thin doing so. Our stores had dwindled to what our few towers could produce in the garden tiers and what our hunters could catch. There was danger in that. We couldn’t wait, couldn’t be afraid any longer.
Maili found a tolerant vendor who’d slept on our tier the night before. The man held three whipperling chicks in a basket. Maili knelt beside him and spread her silk cords on a small piece of woven fiber.
The vendor looked to me and called, “Macal, what if no one comes?” Maili watched the two of us to see if my answer would be different.
“If no one comes,” Sidra said, coming to stand beside me, her dark hair unbraided still and shining with oil, “I’ll buy your cords, Maili. Or trade you for this.” She held up one of the last of our apples, and the child’s eyes grew wide with delight.
To me, Sidra whispered, “Did you sleep?” She looked doubtfully at the blanket, at my wings.
“Of course,” I lied.
She ran fingers through my hair. “You are as cold as a dawn wind, Macal.”
At her look, I raised my chin. “We foiled an attack. Six blackwings. The seventh is bound on the balcony.”
Sidra, daughter of one councilor, partner of another, drew a sharp breath and raised her own chin to match. Whispered, “You flew in battle?”
“And won. The market is safe.”
She nodded, but her brow furrowed. “Dangerous times. Should we change course for safety’s sake?”
“I believe we need a market more.” I hoped she would too.
Nearby, vendors who’d slept at Mondarath overnight set out their wares: local vegetables, seeds, a few long-held jars of honey and muzz. Not nearly enough. Scourweed and small scraps of silk for patching wings. Oh, how we needed the silk.
I tried to relax. Our guards were strong in the air. We’d caught a blackwing. We’d stopped more. The market would happen. All would be well.
But the sky remained empty. And the wares on display looked sparse to my eye. No tea, no bone cutters, no long swaths of wingsilk. Those were from the southern towers. What we offered today was a lack of things, not a surfeit.
Still, I nodded to each vendor and clasped their hands. Markets were a chance to start again.
Would this be enough?
Waiting turned to wondering, our balcony growing warmer as the sun climbed higher.
“Sometimes vendors are late. Buyers sleep in.” Sidra frowned as she looked across the empty sky. “We agreed on midmorning. But people might wait to see if it is safe. No one likes to be first across a new bridge.” She did not mention what I’d told her of the attack.
I hesitated. “There is always risk.”
Even as we spoke, the rope ladders to our tier shook and tightened. Another vendor climbed up from below. Dojha Viit grinned and shook out a small silk mat as she bowed. “Greetings, Risen. Magister Macal. Sidra.”
I exchanged my bow for hers. “Greetings, Dojha. You are welcome here.”
Sidra embraced her old friend tightly, then let her go, looking closely at her dark brown eyes. “You haven’t been eating.”
“The fledges eat first.” Four fierce words, each carefully knotted with no room between them for argument.
In the distance, figures began to gather on the bridge from Viit. I pointed at them. “Just late indeed.” There would be a market today, after all.
But Sidra’s frown lingered. I saw her slip an apple from her pocket and press it into Dojha’s hand.
Around me, most Mondarath citizens had risen and put their mats away. Fledges and adults circled the few vendors warily, looking through the wares available, buying little.
Sidra left my side. “I have an idea.” Moments later, she returned carrying a basket of teas from two Allsuns ago. We’d been saving them for my brother Wik’s return. For the homecoming of our friends, Kirit and Nat.
“There’s no reason to hold back any longer,” she said, practical as always, but her voice broke on “hold.” I pressed my hand to her cheek, then touched my fingertip to my eye and looked up. I felt as if I was choking, but not from sadness. A tension rose up between Sidra and me—two towers, separated for a moment.
“No reason, especially if you’ve given up hope,” I said.
She looked at me, surprised. “On the contrary. I have hope for this market.” She pulled away, turned, and did not explain further. She spread the tea out on Maili’s mat—a faded silk square with a map of towers marked on it. When Sidra stepped back, murmuring, “Best get a fair price, little one,” Maili’s expression spread into a wide grin. Several of Mondarath’s, Viit’s, and Densira’s hightower families gathered round to grab up the bounty.
“What if the blackwings come?” the bird vendor said.
Sidra pressed a hand to her chest, but then stepped back, into the slowly growing rows of vendors and buyers, who had all stilled, watching us intently.
Is a market a market when few come to buy and even fewer have things to sell? Even if it’s the only one of its kind left? My shoulders sagged with the weight of our responsibility to the community. A normal market was crowded.
I lost sight of Sidra among the sparse sellers and buyers. Then I heard her.
“Ridiculous!” Sidra’s irritated laughter rippled across the tier. “That’s far too much.”
“Times are hard, Risen.” The vendor, Sarai Densira, waved her hand over several items we already had plenty of. “Perhaps later, if I haven’t sold the lot.”
Was Sidra mocking us by playing at markets when she knew the risk? I readied to scold her, and the Densira vendor too, when I realized their words had caused the entire tier to relax. Children once more ran through the rough stallways, and three new shoppers crossed the bridge from Viit.
The pattern of barter had offered the day a familiar rhythm, and people knew the words to this song. Soon more haggling echoed across the tier.
Sidra came to stand by my side. “A little early for haggling?” I teased, but I was proud. This was the city as I knew it best: hard won and ready to rise to any challenge. This was my partner, who could shift tension into victory.
“It’s the one joy remaining to me, love,” she said. “We cannot survive on muzz and scourweed.”
Another vendor waved for her attention, pulling a small basket from a pannier. “Why worry over scourweed when you coul
d be feasting on stone fruit?”
At the words, many heads turned. Stone fruit was growing rarer, as much of it was in the south. Stomachs, including mine, growled.
“Trade or markers,” the vendor said. But he slipped two small fruits to the waiting children.
“Save the pits,” Sidra called. “You can plant them.” New hope in her voice.
The children, each clutching a nearly ripe stone fruit, had cleared the balcony and entered the market.
It was gone all too quickly, but it had done the trick. My anger faded. Others began to buy and sell.
All around, families brought from their stores things they’d held dear during the fortifications. Even Sidra crowed with delight on seeing the perfect yellow thread she needed to mend her wings.
Across the empty sky marked by too few birds, I saw one flier, then two, approaching on the morning breeze from the southwest. They came faster and more directly than anyone had a right to do when towers were on such alert during Fortify.
More blackwings? I whistled for my guards. Reached for my wingset again.
The hunters circling Mondarath formed a claw in the air and surrounded them, threatening to drop them from the sky.
“Let them land,” I called. “Guard them close.” I stayed wary, my fingers touching the grip of the glass-tooth knife at my belt.
Guards, two of them. One very young. Neither wore black wings. Relax, Macal. Neither spared a glance for Urie.
“Sidra.” I drew her aside, away from the vendors and shoppers, and we went together to greet the guards. On the way, she lifted a cupful of chicory from over our small guano stove and held it, waiting, while the guards landed and furled their wings.
She passed it to me and our fingertips brushed. For a moment, I held her hands in mine, and the cup too. She held my gaze, and I was caught there, connected to her and strengthened by her. The half smile, the dimple in her cheek. The wink and the sideways glance at the young guard she thought should receive the cup first. Then she slid her hands from beneath mine and stepped forward with me.
“Strength to your wings,” I said softly. I offered the cup to the new arrival Sidra had selected.
