by Fran Wilde
“I left Maalik with Kirit. So she and Wik can signal when they find a safe place for us to shelter below,” Nat said. He shoveled a mouthful of greens into his mouth.
The boiled lichen soured on my tongue. “You can’t just leave when they signal. We have to work together. You need supplies that we have above the clouds. We need your”—I inclined my head towards Ciel and Nat then—“guidance. Your knowledge. You can’t just tell the towers to follow you down and hope for the best. What if we get lost?”
“Some towers don’t seem to care about losing others,” Aliati muttered.
I choked on the greens. She had a point.
Ceetcee turned to say something sharp, but Elna shook her head. She moved to stand next to Nat. The baby kicked in the sling and began to cry.
“They will care,” I said. “There aren’t enough of us left to not care any longer, or to decide who is worth keeping and who isn’t. Already we’ve spotted the blackwings aloft making counts of the city. We’ve tried to do the same.”
“How many, do you think?” Djonn asked the question we wanted to know. How many would need our help? How much chaos would that cause? The undercloud cave fell silent, waiting to hear the answer.
“I cannot say. We haven’t been able to survey the southern quadrants. Several hundred in the north. No more.” It was not enough. It was too many.
If Wik and Kirit were wrong about the number of days remaining … if my own head count was wrong.
Ciel slammed her bowl on the floor. “There’s no time,” she said, staring into the firelight. “We save everyone, now. We tell them all.”
“How will you go about saving everyone, Ciel? It will be madness. People will panic and get hurt.” Beliak’s voice was tense with worry.
Ceetcee cradled the infant to her chest, then touched Ciel’s shoulder. “We have to be careful even about who we tell and what we tell them, or there can be more riots.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Nat said. “The less we tell people, the fewer arguments.”
Ciel glared at Nat with startling fierceness. I felt the same way.
“These are people! They are not fledges.” I found myself pacing again, dangerously close to Elna. The mood in the alcove darkened.
Ciel’s voice rose in pitch, frantic. “Doesn’t everyone need to know, don’t they deserve to make their own plans even if they can’t get enough lighter-than-air? Don’t they get a chance?”
Nat spoke quickly to calm her. “They abandoned you, Ciel. They abandoned all of us to the clouds.” Too quickly. He sounded as angry as I was. “The city weighed our crimes and let us fall away.”
As if I were soothing a concerned councilor, I said, “You found a way to climb back up the city’s ridged back, its broken towers, anyway. You came to rescue your family.”
Nat nodded, silent.
“You know others would want the same chance.”
“I have an idea,” Ceetcee said, but the baby continued to cry. She turned to Nat. “Hold her?” and put the tiny creature in his arms. His eyes widened. He held the child like she would slip from his grasp.
Ceetcee knelt on the floor and began to draw next to Djonn’s sketches. “We anchor pulleys as low as possible on the low side of the city. Then we can send down successive groups even as we build more kites. We’ll tether them below after the last trip, so they can stay aloft.” Djonn nodded at her plan.
Nat was transfixed by the baby in his arms. He gripped too tight, and she squalled. “I don’t want to drop her,” he murmured.
“You won’t,” Ceetcee whispered and kept drawing schematics. Nat settled the baby in the crook of his elbow, and she quieted.
“How could I not try to save her first?” Nat murmured, looking at the baby.
“There are many fledges above the clouds too,” I said quietly. Who will save them?
The baby’s tiny fingers curled over Nat’s thumb. She squalled. He rocked her quiet again, his face rapt.
“Everyone deserves a chance as much as we do,” Ceetcee said. “The remaining Singers and the blackwings, the quadrants. The scavengers too.” She looked at Aliati, who spread her arms wide. “The whole city. All of us.”
The cave fell quiet for several moments. Wind beat its way inside, as a new storm spun clouds into twists beyond the walls and tossed the meadow. Blackwings hurried to cover and tie down the crawler.
A storm brewed inside the bone walls too.
Aliati moved to sit beside Ciel.
“Our community, here—this group,” Nat began, still rocking the baby, “is more important to me than the city itself.” The cave amplified his voice and made it ring. “We could all die trying to save the very people who don’t want us.”
Elna winced as her bones cracked and popped. Her clouded eyes reflected the firelight. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Our community is all of us. Everyone here,” she argued, holding up a hand to stop protests. “Everyone above. And below: Kirit and Wik. Those above who are innocent, as well as those who were complicit in the blackwings’ and in the Singers’ crimes. We all rose with the city. We’re part of what is happening now. We’ll find a solution together.” Her voice lifted and cracked.
Everyone above. Sidra. Rya. Dojha. Urie. The councilors. The fledges. Nat might have few ties left in the towers, but this wasn’t about friends. This was about holding our community together. Ten days. So much to do. We needed a decision.
But I waited and watched. I held back from pressing the cloudbound group to agree with me. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.
Elna squeezed Nat’s arm, the way a mother sometimes greets a child returning from a cold flight. “Remember who you were before the fall, Nat. Who you wanted to be.”
A leader. He’d wanted to be one once. He’d flown against Dix. Did he still wish to lead? Did anyone have a choice any longer?
But. Two Allsuns ago, Nat had been unable to see Dix’s machinations until it was too late. He’d missed turmoil in the air during his wingtest. How can someone lead well if they don’t know where they’re going?
“Nothing will keep me from wanting to save my friends first,” Nat began. “But I’ll—we will get everyone down safely.”
Djonn watched Nat make this promise and dipped his head once. “We will. I’ll find a way.” He scratched his head. “The more information and help I have, the better.”
“Some of us will have to scale the towers, go back up through the clouds, and get the blackwings to see sense,” Aliati said. “Others need to begin building. All before the city falls.” Two moons—less than that now.
“We’ll need food and water for the journey, silkspiders, lots of plinths, lighter-than-air,” Ciel began.
“What about wings?” I said. “We’ll need spares.”
One heartbeat. Two. Djonn added them to the list on the cave floor. “All the wings we can, even if we need to use some for kite silk.”
I was so focused on his list, I nearly missed how Nat looked at Ciel, then shook his head. But I saw clearly how Ciel narrowed her eyes. What was that about?
She put her bowl of uneaten greens down.
Nat spoke quickly. “Wings too. For everyone descending. But if we bring silkspiders, we won’t need extra.”
Ciel stayed quiet.
“Tell me more about the predators?” Djonn finally asked in the lull. Ciel described the bone eaters again, and the cities more thoroughly. She drew the giant birds on the floor. Explained how cities fought, stayed alive.
As she spoke, Nat rocked the infant, who cooed softly. “What did you name her?” he whispered, looking at Ceetcee. With the list nearly complete, I admit I was curious too.
“We haven’t,” Ceetcee whispered back. “It’s unlucky, you know that. Naming without a tower is bad luck.”
I hadn’t known that—a tower superstition, not a Singer one—but Nat nodded as if he was familiar. Elna too. “Shouldn’t tempt bad luck. Especially now.”
“We’ll name her on the ground.” Ce
etcee gave a little smile when she said it. She took the baby back from Nat.
Ciel paused in her descriptions, her drawings. “Macal, what if the blackwings won’t listen? What if they don’t believe us?”
“I listened to you,” I said. “I believed you. If we can convince Rya, they might still listen to her.”
Djonn bowed his head, then shook it, as if he was dislodging something unpleasant. “I worry about blackwings coming here. Working with us. Even if it speeds the work up. They were very demanding last time I worked for them.”
I remembered the scene at the city council plinth when Dix and Nat fought. Nat had revealed that fledges—including Ciel and Moc—had been trapped by Dix’s blackwings and forced along with Djonn to mine heartbone.
Demanding was one word for what the blackwings had done. I had many other words: cloudnapping, deceit, cruelty. But perhaps Rya would be different. Urie thought so. I hoped he was right.
In the mist outside, shadows swooped and dove. Skymouths hunted prey in the rain. I peered hard enough at the gray shadows that I saw stars.
“We will keep them in line,” Aliati said, frowning.
Djonn looked at me, and I agreed vigorously. “We promise.”
Ceetcee drew a long breath. “I’ll go with Djonn and Ciel into the meadow and look at how we can speed up the work. We’ll look at the plates in the littlemouth cave too, to see if there’s anything we can repurpose. They’ve come in handy before. Maybe there are more machines we can use.”
“I’ll go back up,” I said. “Enlist Sidra and the northwest’s council to help motivate the towers.” I had what I’d come for now: answers. That these led to more questions and fears was something I could work with. Sidra would help. Soon.
Beliak elbowed Nat hard enough to make him grunt softly. Then jutted his chin at me. “You know the ground,” Beliak said sadly to Nat. “We don’t.”
Oh. I’d been hoping Ciel would accompany me to help me sway the towers.
Nat wavered also. He tossed the piece of bone and caught it once, twice. The third time he put the shard in his pocket. “I’ll go,” he said to the rain, the cave, and to me.
Even as he spoke the words, I dreaded the possibilities. Did I still think of him as the one who made mistakes, who flew too fast? I did. Was he keeping secrets? Yes, almost certainly. Would he argue with me? Probably. More delays.
We had two moons, no more. I needed his help. I couldn’t go back up alone.
“This plan requires everyone to cooperate, on short notice,” Ceetcee said. She looked at Nat. “You must make sure they do.”
The baby cooed in the dim cave. Ceetcee turned to me, concerned. “Can you and Nat work together?”
“Do you mean whether we can cooperate? Or whether we can get everyone to cooperate?” I wasn’t sure I was going to like her answer. Or be able to live up to it.
“Both.”
Everyone watched me for my answer. “I will.”
She looked at Nat. “What about you?”
He straightened. Took the baby in his arms. Put his hand on the baby’s down-soft hair. “I’ll do everything I can, both here and when we return above the clouds. But if it doesn’t work, I’m coming right back down to get you all, and we’re leaving. Before the city cracks any farther. Before it falls.”
Ceetcee smiled grimly. Nat passed the baby to Beliak. They exchanged a long look, and then Ceetcee put one hand on my shoulder, one hand on Nat’s. “That’s fair. Time to get to work.”
15
KIRIT, BELOW
While Skyshouter found a city’s heart
In my dreams, the ground rose up to meet me and swallowed me whole. The earth crushed my leg. The dirt whispered and screamed.
A firm grip caught my shoulders, held me still. Voices spoke in what might have been soothing tones, but I heard them as shouts and threats. I was trapped in walls of bone. My tears felt hot when they came at all, and like sandpaper when they didn’t come. Why had Wik left me alone? I smelled something sharp and astringent moments before it was pushed against my nose, before I fought my way free and upright, and was dizzy but sitting up. Someone spoke, and in the dim light, a hand moved from my arm to touch my face.
The hand was the color of very old bone, brown and speckled. But there was nothing old about my visitor: no wrinkles on their neck or face, or across their shorn head. Above the mask they wore, their eyes were dark, and so much like Ezarit’s I gasped and looked again. But similarities stopped there. Small in stature, narrow chested, with thin arms, the stranger tilted their chin and the skin at the corners of their eyes crinkled.
Smiling? At me? I felt dizzy again.
Their head seemed too big to be held up by such a tiny upper body. Their legs looked sturdy enough, though much thicker than mine.
“Where is Wik?” I asked. He’d left me here.
They weren’t as tall as me, nor as broad. They looked oddly upside down. I thought I could take them in a fight. They spoke, their words like sand slipping over desert hills, like the clack of a bone eater’s beak. What did our words sound like to them, I wondered?
I asked, over and over again, “Where is Wik?”
My visitor’s eyes narrowed, trying to comprehend. The individual—I couldn’t tell he or she—patted me on the shoulder and pressed me back down to sleep. I leaned back, weak and dizzy, but elated.
There were others, living outside of the city.
The way they spoke, or sang in response to my questions. So many beautiful sounds. But if they told me where Wik was, or where he had been, I couldn’t understand.
We couldn’t understand each other. But what mattered most was that in this new city, there were other people. We weren’t alone.
Oh, how our songs would have to change.
They didn’t whistle as much as murmur a language of long, low, whirring sounds. Each was a touch to the ear like silk, like a gentle wind. When the sounds stopped, I wanted them to start again, as a distraction from the pain I felt, the heat in my ears, my skin.
We weren’t alone.
The stranger’s words shaped an urgency now. Phrases repeated, pitched low, sounds like kip and serra and something I couldn’t make out. I protested, and the voice became more insistent. Then a hand pressed something hot to my leg. I screamed again. This time, another hand stuck something in my mouth. It was too hard to shove out with my tongue; it pushed so far back I bit down. Suddenly—oh, the pain—I could not feel the bed beneath me, only the searing pain in my leg and the lack of space to breathe. The bone walls closed in. Panic closed in. I could not stay up in the air I could not stay aloft I dreamed I was falling and the ground caught me and I fell back into darkness.
* * *
I slept in a hammock.
The city swayed beneath me.
I knew these two things.
The third thing I knew was that my leg no longer hurt, and I could wiggle my toes beneath the rough sheet. That there was a sheet, a clean one, was another remarkable thing. I’d become accustomed to dirt and ground.
And the light was a lantern, not the sun.
We weren’t alone.
There were other cities, other people.
The realization shocked me awake.
Tired and dizzy, I fought to sit up. A stranger standing by my hammock made a slicing gesture with their hands, then pressed my shoulders down. I struggled before falling back on the hammock.
Across from where I lay, Wik paced. Wik. Here.
He caught my gaze. “You’re awake. Don’t try to move.”
Too late. I swallowed dryly against nausea as he drew closer. Handed me a water sack. The room where we were was circular, like a chamber we’d known once, a lifetime ago, lit by the soft glow of littlemouths.
“Where?” I rasped. “How long?” I looked for my satchel, for the plates. For Maalik.
He shook his head. “We’re on Varat, though of course that’s not what they call it. I don’t know how long. A few days?”
They? A few days? My satchel, with the brass plates in it, was missing.
The revelations battled through my vertigo. They. There were others here. That’s not what they call it … The sounds of their words in my memory. Words I couldn’t understand.
If I couldn’t understand, and Wik couldn’t, how would we tell them what had happened?
What if they were so different from us, we couldn’t ever communicate with them?
Outside, a boom and the sounds of bone creaking were as loud as thunder in the clouds. Then the sway began again, in the opposite direction. The rhythm had permeated my dreams, boom, sway … boom, sway. Bone clattered against bone, and metal clanked.
From down the passage came footsteps. A rough voice with a lilt at the end of it. A softer voice. Words that sounded like water and dust. Though the speakers were nearby, I couldn’t make out more.
A flutter within a fold of robe against my chest. A ruffle of feathers. I breathed easier. Maalik, still with me. Still hiding.
Two strangers entered the alcove, their mouths and noses behind woven masks, their hair shorn. They conferred with the person who’d pressed me back into the hammock. All were dressed the same way. One of the strangers had a spiral tattoo on their neck.
Wik stood when they entered. “They’ve been healing your leg,” he said quietly to me. “They saved your life.” His voice said more than his words: Be calm, don’t panic.
I understood why in a moment. They were more than strangers; their language was as mysterious as a bird’s, their gestures unfamiliar, and their bodies—thin shoulders and narrow chests, strong hips and legs that I remembered from my illness—still looked upside down to me now that I’d recovered.
No. They were not different. We were. Would they accept us? Did we belong?
After staring at me, the strangers said something to the healer and left.
The healer’s dark brown, hazel-flecked eyes peering at me over their mask were as kind as Ezarit’s. Gentle hands pulled the bandage back, instead of the mottled purple I expected, I saw nearly healed skin.
