by Fran Wilde
The first guard bowed, her hair falling loose from her braids and sweeping past a scabbed-over knife scar, red at the edges. She’d come from the southeast a fortnight ago and had been staying at Amrath. I’d last seen her when their tower council had agreed to the market days.
“Thank you, Risen,” she said, taking the cup and sipping enough to wet her lips and no more. Minlin from Grigrit, now Amrath. Minlin, who passed the cup back to me to share again, rather than passing it herself. Sidra had chosen well.
“Our honor to serve the city of the north and west,” the second murmured, bowing, then taking the cup from my hand. A stranger’s face, but the markers tied to his wings and in his hair were from Grigrit. For a moment my heart rose. Perhaps they were here to trade.
Then I saw their empty satchels, their hard looks. Had I been mistaken? I touched my knife, but left it sheathed. The Mondarath guards who’d landed with the travelers drew closer.
Sidra, retrieving the bone cup from the second guard, was closest, and in most danger—and one of the visiting guards had closed his hand around the space above his arm sheath. The wind rushed in my ears. Sidra—I had to warn her. To shout.
But instead of a knife, the guard withdrew a message chip. This was no attack after all, but news. “From Amrath,” she said slowly. Our messengers had passed in the sky. “Blackwings raided in the middle of the night. They also infiltrated Naza at dawn. Mondarath holds the only market in the northwest now.”
I bit back a groan. My warning hadn’t come in time. We’d been defeated before we even began.
Urie, tethered on the balcony, was trying to make himself look as small as possible.
No. We were not fully defeated. We’d captured their first attacker and stopped a blackwing attack. One of three. That wasn’t enough.
The bone horns began to sound long and low at Wirra and Varu. Defend. Fortify. Attackers. Again.
We had saved our own tower, but the quadrant was still in danger.
“Clouds.” The message chip I held dropped from my fingers and hit the floor with a crack. A gray pall thickened in the distance above Varu as smoke spilled from the side of the bone-white tower.
The guards turned and watched. “More attacks,” said the one with the scar. “We should go.”
I helped them lift wingsets to shoulders and tighten their straps. Sidra brought another bone cup of water. Each sipped. “On your wings,” she said.
“On your wings, Risen,” the youngest responded, and spread hers. But she stopped, frozen, watching a new figure, trailing smoke on the wind, approach Mondarath. The flier passed through a building line of guards that stretched to Viit, Densira, and Wirra. I heard faint windsigns: “known” and “friend.”
I’d sent a refugee guard from Laria back to the southwest in hopes of trading. Raq, one of few among those who could still locate supplies. Brown wings, a particularly hesitant dip to her glide path from having grown a little too big for the wingset.
The Amrath messengers recognized her too. “You sent Raq to the southwest on her own?”
I hadn’t thought they’d know each other, but I realized that was foolish. Raq traded with many towers. “I sent her south to broker better trade. She seemed capable and willing.”
The young guards turned and looked at me, eyes wide, and I cleared my throat. “She wanted to go. Said she knew just who to talk to.”
By now, Raq was closer. Her wings wobbled and failed, then caught the wind again as she struggled to take the most direct path.
“Go help her,” I ordered. The guards launched, their wings locked. I prepared to join them. Another battle was the last thing we needed, but I would not sacrifice my tower. “Stay close,” I shouted, then whistled for arrow formation.
Sidra put her hand on my arm. “You are needed here more, Macal.”
As she spoke, my order was relayed through the air. I closed my eyes against the wind for a heartbeat’s time, my feet still firmly planted on the tier. Around me, quieter sounds of agreement, whispers of fear. A vendor far to the back still hawked their wares.
Sidra was right. I paced the length of the balcony. When I approached him, Urie stood eagerly, bound hands extended. “Let me help too. As a show of goodwill.”
Thanks to Urie, we knew danger threatened the northwest again.
We’d known already that the trouble Dix had brewed in the southwest—trying to grasp control of the city for herself through lies and betrayals—would spread. But I had hoped for a respite now that she was gone, and a chance to restock before more trouble came.
I’d hoped we could change the wind’s direction. Instead, we’d just strengthened it.
More smoke poured now from Varu, and then from farther away, near Bissel. “They’re attacking in broad daylight.” How could I stay?
“There is no council left, and no Singers, to enforce Laws beyond your own tower,” Sidra said gently, pulling my fingers from the straps. “You are the last of both. And the unrest is spreading too fast to be chance. We need you to stay safe. Talk to the captive blackwing again.”
She was right. We were too few, and the blackwings were still too many in the southwest to be safe. Urie was our best source of information. If we could trust him.
Raq, her tailskirts and footsling smoldering, finally careened close enough to the guards for them to bring her in. She dropped to the balcony, and we beat at her robes while she whispered through a smoke-hoarse voice.
“They shot fire arrows at me! From Varu! I’d stopped to rest. They wove through the tiers like they lived there. Amrath, Varu, even Haim. And no one in the southwest would talk to me. They’re too afraid of the blackwings.”
Those who had come to Mondarath to shop pressed close to the balcony once more, and this time nothing could distract them from watching and listening. Remaining vendors began stowing their wares. Maili put her silk cords back in her pocket and clutched Sidra’s tea. Raq raised an eyebrow at our captive blackwing.
“Fortify,” I told my guards. Our quadrant was not yet entirely on fire, we still had a chance. But for how long? Had Viit been infiltrated? I glanced at the people still on the bridge. Did we know them well enough? I turned to the boy.
Urie shrank from my gaze. His guards moved closer to him.
Tower against tower. The songs had come true.
“Tell me the rest of what you know,” I ordered our captive blackwing.
There would be no bridges built from trade. And no more markets today.
5
NAT, BELOW
All that shook, all that fell was sky and bone,
When Nimru attacked, I wanted to rise above the desert’s red dust, to fly away, and up. To get out fast.
My feet remained firmly planted on the ground. I would fight instead.
The bone eaters ringing Nimru dove and swooped. Their shadows huge and black; their wings blocked the sun. A dust cloud built around them, around Nimru as that city increased speed. More bone eaters launched from Corat’s husk to cruise languidly in Nimru’s wake.
But our bone eaters, the ones who’d done nothing in days? They rose on their haunches and shrieked as if they knew what was coming.
“We should run,” Kirit said. “Right at it.”
The idea of running right at a creature whose pores were bigger than me was laughable. “Nimru would barely notice even as its foot pressed your wings into the dust,” I said. “Your shoulders, I mean.”
Kirit looked at me, her chin set. The setting sun caught her scars, the few beads remaining in her hair. “We’ll chase it away anyway.”
“You can’t chase it away, Kirit. You saw what it did to Corat. Kill it or be killed by it.”
She looked hard at our own city’s brow, at the sores on its hide. At giant battle scuffs in the dirt all around its resting place. “We’ll find its weakness. Chase it off, if we can.”
Cities. I was done with them. I didn’t want to leave the other city standing. I wanted to end it, get my family, and move to saf
ety.
Wherever safety was.
Nimru put its head down to smell the ground, stuck a nose in the awful runoff from our city, still some ways off. Then it lifted its gaze to us again and kept moving.
Wik lifted his hand again. Thumb aligned with the horizon. He rose to his feet.
“How much longer do we have?” Ciel asked. Her pile of arrows had grown.
“Go for the eyes if Nimru lowers its head like that again,” Wik ordered. “All of us. The left eye. Hook it and try to pull.” He looked at Ciel. “Not long now.”
The eye was one of the most tender spots on any creature. If we could alter Nimru’s inexorable path away from our city, we might—not turn it exactly, but keep it from gaining a direct hit.
An oncoming city, even a small one in the distance, would not be in the distance for long. And we were not prepared.
We should have climbed. We should have gone up instead of remaining here. We should have tried to reach the clouds and never stopped.
Nimru took up the entire horizon while still far away. Though it moved slowly, it did not stop. The momentum it built up while first trundling, then pounding, then barreling right at its prey was a tattoo of hunger against the ground.
Once, I would have given my wings to know this truth about the cities.
Nimru—how I regretted giving it a name—had set its sights on our immobilized, dying city, and us. I would forgo any chance at wings to make it go away.
Wik’s and Kirit’s feet pounded the city’s hide, beating fast patterns.
“It cannot die, it must not die,” Kirit whispered as she ran past. Her eyes were focused on the monster in the distance. She didn’t know I’d heard.
I rose to the balls of my feet, grabbed arrows from Ciel, and raced behind her to our city’s far side.
“We’ll try to divert it!” Wik called over his shoulder.
Four tiny people. Only ten bone eaters. Not near enough to turn anything.
As Nimru closed on our flank, its own bone eaters, starved-looking in comparison to the sleek, fat bone eaters of our city, began to attack. They dove at us. Ciel fired arrows until Wik yelled, “Save those!”
She ran to grab bones from the midden to throw instead. Wik joined her.
Large pieces of white bone arced into the sunset-reddened sky.
All but one bone eater chased the delicacies.
The last bird swooped low, casting a dark shadow as it reached out its claws to catch live prey: me. It tried to grab my hair and lift me by it. I ducked, barely. “Watch out!”
“Ciel, get back on the city! Stay with us,” Wik yelled. But Ciel had already slid down a flank and was out front, waving a bone hook at the last, diving bone eater.
While we were distracted, Nimru moved faster and dust billowed, blinding us.
I could hear it roaring. Our own city bellowed but did not move. Nimru turned slightly at the last moment and slipped in the fetid runoff from our city’s side. The giant head bent once more to the ground.
“Now!” Wik said, running as fast as he could at the monster’s head.
“No! Get back!” Kirit yelled. Her voice strong as a knife, cracked with worry.
“If we don’t stop it, there’ll be nothing to get back to,” Wik yelled over his shoulder.
He was right. I chased the tattooed Singer into the cloud of dust, choking as it clogged my throat and blew into my eyes.
The city’s head was still low when we reached it. Wik threw his line, caught a sharp ridge above Nimru’s brow, and hauled himself up. I climbed up behind him, missing the city’s gnashing teeth, the hot hiss of its breath too close.
A black carcass crashed to the ground below us. One of the derelict bone eaters, its throat ripped by a cousin’s claw. Our own bone eaters finally dove in force.
All ten circled Nimru now. And Nimru, with all of its momentum, slid uncontrollably towards our own city, its legs scrambling for purchase on the red mud.
Wik and I rode Nimru as it wobbled and swayed. We clung to the enormous bulk of it and tried to keep climbing. I lost my grip and slid down the rope. Began climbing again. Below us, Kirit fired arrows at the creature’s right eye. I couldn’t see Ciel.
Finally, Wik dangled above Nimru’s left eye, half his robe tied over a bone spur on its forehead. He swung himself back and forth until he had enough force to drive his bone hook into the corner of the creature’s eye. On the next swing, he drew his knife and stabbed at its lower lid.
I dug my own knife into the city’s broad foot as it passed and hauled myself up on a ridge of fat, then began stabbing and digging at the tender spots between its claws, where the nail met the skin. Blood tinted the air crimson. Far above, I could barely make out Wik. I couldn’t see the others. I kept stabbing, and the creature roared in pain, a sound that shook the world and left me nearly deaf.
Nimru thrashed, the motion creating wind vortexes, and tried to bite at us and peel us from its skin. Kirit and Ciel—they’d made it out alive—shot arrows past my line of sight, striking the eye, the delicate inner nostrils, everywhere that seemed the least bit tender. Ciel ran forward, trying for a better shot.
Meantime the flock of bone eaters grew to twenty, then thirty. The hungry birds swooped at the city’s injured eye in twos and threes, and Nimru began to slow.
“Get me more hooks!” Wik bellowed. I tried to scramble up closer to him, but Kirit was on the rope now, and much faster. She drove the next hook into the city’s seeping eye and loosed the strip of silk tying Wik to the creature’s head. Then he swung all his weight against the hook and Nimru roared, shaking its head hard, as if a stinger had caused it great pain.
Slowly, Nimru began to turn, rumbling and gnashing at us. At the bone eaters.
This time, momentum worked with the smaller city’s bulk and with gravity to pull it off balance. Nimru slid once more on the slippery ground and runoff from our larger city. It tilted and wobbled. Struggled to regain its footing. Blood gushed black from its wounds, adding to the mess on the ground. Thick yellow claws dug into the dirt, and the earth cracked, quaked, and lifted.
In the dust and confusion, our own city watched through a slatted yellow eye the size of a tower tier. Jaws slowly opened.
Nimru shuddered. Its foreleg collapsed beneath it.
Clouds, it was going to fall over, and we were on the low side.
“Get off now!” I yelled and dragged Ciel with me, back and closer to the ground, hoping Kirit and Wik would jump.
Wik’s robe tangled on the winghook. He struggled and kicked, trying to break free.
I yanked the few grips we had remaining and drove them into Nimru’s flank. Began to climb until I was close enough to throw a grip-anchored rope. Wik caught the rope, barely. He wriggled to the end of the bone hook, dropped, and swung free. He hit the ground hard, just beyond the city’s thrashing foot.
Kirit followed. Nimru rolled. We slid down its flank and ran out of the increasing shadow. The ground darkened, the narrowing space between the two cities blocking the sunlight.
Nimru’s smaller spires began to break with loud popping and shearing sounds. Bone cracked. Shards hit the ground around us.
“Get clear!” I yelled as the smaller city crashed into our larger one, the tips of its spires connecting with and destroying large chunks of the bone ridge near the cloudline as it came down. We ran clear as a sound like deep thunder echoed over and over again. The sound of Nimru in pain, protesting gravity, pain, and death.
I pushed Kirit away from a falling piece of tower. Bone smashed the ground near where we’d just stood.
“The city above!” Kirit pointed up.
Pieces of smaller tower tiers smashed through layers of bone high above. A cloud of dark wings—birds or bats—erupted overhead, out of the collapsing bone structures. The creatures sped off.
The sick sound of towers cracking began anew.
Nimru’s towers dug deep into the larger spires of our own city. They stuck there, at sloping angles.
The earth shook with the force of the blow, and the smaller city crumpled and bled. Our own city wavered, but stayed upright. Both cities groaned and the smaller one breathed in painfully, its sides shuddering. Then its eyes rolled back and a brackish vomit poured from its mouth that ended in foam.
The sounds from above began to cascade, a rumbling and tearing. Unimaginable.
“Run far,” Wik yelled as a larger chunk of tower, crusted with filth and debris, crashed to the ground. Then another. Above, a shadow loomed and grew large in the cloud top. I did not move, shocked. The city above was falling on us. Kirit grabbed my arm and pulled.
One struck tower cracked with a wrenching sound. Daylight poured through cracks where smaller spires intersected the tiers. It fell now, ripping through the clouds and trailing streamers of vapor behind it, falling fast and sudden and crashing to earth atop Nimru, crushing its head.
The point of the tower dug a crater in the mud below as it plowed into the earth. Bone drove everything before it, birds and moss and plants and clouds; I could not look to see if there were people inside.
A hundred tiers or more had crashed to the ground. The dust billowed and enveloped us. We could not see.
The world came down around us, and we ran for shelter.
6
MACAL, ABOVE
The Magister sought the cause alone
The city’s last day began like any other: tense and angry. For two days after the market attacks, the towers had furled in on themselves. The city was wound as tight as stowed wings. Few messengers arrived at—or left—Mondarath.
We braced for the blackwings to come for the remaining towers in our quadrant. “What are they waiting for?” citizens whispered.
Sidra looked at me with clear eyes. “They are waiting for us to weaken.”
We were weak already. Scarcity would do the rest of their job for them.
Within our tiers, fights grew pettier. Many blamed Urie, Raq, or anyone they didn’t know. Blackwings. They could be anywhere. The air grew charged with fear.
The sky had emptied of birds and fliers both.
