Cloudbound

by Fran Wilde

  “You want me to pull the platform, on the wing?”

  She smiled, relieved I understood, that I was taking her seriously. “Yes. And we’ll all row.” Behind her, Moc giggled, half drugged still. I was already tying the tether around my waist.

  “It’s going to be unsteady.” In the best of all worlds, that was all it would be. Worst possibility, the platform would drag too much, I would lose my glide, fall, and pull a section of the plinth down with me, dumping the drugged fledges into the air.

  “If you don’t, they’ll catch us,” she said. “Come on.” She pushed two fledges towards the extra windbeaters’ wings, then picked up her wing again. It was easily twice her size. Moc, seeing what she was doing, wrapped his hands around the frame too. He helped her lift the foils, still caught in the stupor of the heartbone-rendering Dix had given them to eat.

  “Flap,” Ciel said, her voice barely above a whisper. Then again. The fledges began to fan the air with the wings, in time with her voice. “Flap.” The platform edged away from the Spire agonizingly slowly. It would be light soon.

  Don’t let me fall and kill us all, I whispered to the wind, to myself.

  I tied myself to the forward husk, letting the tether line play out across the platform until it was twice my body-length long. Was that enough lead? It would have to be. Behind me, Moc watched, dully. “If I fall, you untie this line.” I pointed to the knot I’d tied.

  Moc nodded. He understood. I hoped he’d move fast enough.

  “Hold on, everyone,” I said, then ran the platform’s length, the fabric sinking beneath my feet, and leapt into the air, aiming for Bissel.

  A breeze caught my wings and filled them. I lifted and felt the tether play out, then, for a moment, pull taut. It worked! I towed the platform behind me for a moment, until it wallowed and tugged me back. My wings guttered. I was falling. I struggled to stay aloft.

  Another gust filled my wings and I rose slightly. Looking below my wings, I saw the wide spans of the windbeater foils pulling hard at the air on each side of the plinth, in time with a whispered beat.

  Slowly, our platform lurched across the sky.

  8

  BISSEL

  We reached Bissel, barely.

  By rowing the predawn air with the windbeaters’ foils, Ciel and the other fledge managed to lessen the platform’s drag. Meantime, I flew until I felt the rig rising to my glide level, then I turned and landed on the platform, careful not to tangle the tether. I ran and leapt again, launching myself back into the air. The platform pushed back with my launch, but the fledges rowed hard against it. Leap, drag, soar, return: we moved forward like that through the clouds until ledges appeared, wide enough for us to stand on. I aimed us towards them as best I could.

  A strong breeze carried me close to the tower and a stronger gust pushed me high. My wings and head broke the cloudtop. For a few glorious moments, I could see the city in the dawn light. I wanted to stay there, to breathe the cold, drier air, but I scrambled to spill air from my wings. Shouts behind me: the platform was tilting with my sudden rise.

  Close to the clouds, an oil lamp hung from the lowest tier. I let myself rise on the gust, slowly, and I aimed for it. A balcony appeared near the clouds. Barely habitable. But I landed there, rolling to a stop on my belly.

  Once I furled my wings and could look behind me, I rubbed my eyes. The platform was nowhere to be seen, though the tether still tugged at my waist. I shivered, chilled.

  The husks, which should have been well above the cloudline by now, were gone. I yanked hard and reeled in the line, feeling the resistance.

  The line ended in the fabric plinth, and small hands grabbed mine.

  I pulled and dragged until Moc was on the tier, then two more fledges. The bucket of heartbone. The windbeaters’ foils. And finally, Ciel.

  They turned and stared at where the platform should be. Ciel whispered, “Where did it go?”

  We could see the platform’s leading edge at eye level, but not the supporting skymouth husks. Like live skymouths, these disappeared in sunlight too.

  “Quick, tie it down,” I said, seeing before the others that the wind was pulling the platform away.

  “It’s rising,” Ciel said.

  “Let it go,” Moc said. “Let it float away.” He looked out over the sky. “It’s bad.”

  It might be bad, but it was also evidence. I struggled to tie the line to the tier, but the usual bone cleats were worn away.

  Above us, the tiers gradually looked deeper and less overgrown by bone core. We weren’t far from the occupied tiers. A rope dangled nearby.

  “Can you climb?” I asked the twins. Both indicated they could. I let them go first, then pulled myself and the platform, bobbing beyond the tier, up after them.

  “Find any tier with people. Ask for shelter.”

  I hoped we’d find friendly hosts. Or at least no one hostile.

  The platform dragged at my shoulder. I couldn’t keep my grip on the rope. The plinth was too big; it was pulling away from the tower and would take me with it.

  It was more important to get help for Kirit, find the fledges a place to shelter, and inform the council.

  Reluctantly, I cut the line around my waist and let the platform float free. Soon I could no longer see it in the clouds.

  We had much to tell the council, but little proof, besides the bucket and the word of four fledges. We needed allies. Doran? He’d had little interest in the Spire’s state. Worse, he could know about Dix’s project. Ezarit? Maybe. Although she did not control the council guards.

  Both of them together, if Doran wasn’t involved? That would be formidable. If I could finesse it.

  Truth was, a newly elected junior councilor and apprentice getting two of the most powerful council leaders to agree on this issue was going to be as hard as flying into the wind. But I’d find a way. And then I could go home and tell my family what I’d seen.

  The rope stopped shaking above me, and I hauled myself up the knotted fiber until I reached the tier where two fledges stood staring. The twins clung to a Lawsmarker-draped Singer, held tight in his Lawsmarker-bound arms.

  We’d found the tier where Singers quartered. It was as low on the tower as the one Kirit stayed in on Grigrit, but not in the Spire’s shadow. Sunlight crested the cloudtop and lent a soft glow to the mist still clinging to the tier’s spare furnishings. The people inside.

  I took in the length of the Singer at the balcony’s edge. Standing straight and tall beneath his cloak of Laws. More weight covered him than had the elder Singer on Grigrit, but he did not bend. Wik. He stared at Ciel and Moc with a worried look in his green eyes, the dark shadows below them purple in the brightening light. Behind him, a guard in a green cloak held a basket.

  A weight gripped my left shoulder. Small talons. A beak at my earlobe. Maalik. Here?

  Confused, I turned to take in the rest of the tier. Beliak waited inside the balcony. He clapped my right shoulder tight. Held on, and clasped my left hand too. He smiled, his gap-toothed grin shy and relieved, but his deep brown eyes filled with concern.

  “Maalik found us at Densira. I went to meet you at the council plinth. But you didn’t arrive. You missed council. You never miss council! We sent birds to the towers you’d named, and this was the first place you were missing.” Smart. Kirit had told Ezarit she planned to visit Wik. So Ezarit must know. Others too. “We’ve been searching. Were about to set out again, at first light.”

  “Ceetcee worried?”

  “Won’t be when she gets your message.”

  He handed me a blank bone chip on a blue silk cord, and I scratched the mark for “safe.” Then added my sigil, and Beliak’s. While I worked, a small figure rose from beside the cook fire. Tea-colored robes. A sparkle of glass beads at the hems, and in her dark braids. Clouds. Ezarit. Here.

  “Where is my daughter?” she demanded. “What happened? What did you do?”

  Beliak had not released my shoulder. “We thought you we
re cloudfood. You’ve been gone a whole day. We had to tell her.”

  “Kirit was entrusted to your care.” Ezarit laid each word, distinct, heavy, on my head. I couldn’t look away from her. Couldn’t answer. Beliak took the message chip from my fingers, tied it to Maalik’s leg, and whispered, “Home,” to the whipperling. Released Maalik to the sky. But he didn’t step between me and Ezarit.

  “We were trapped in the clouds,” I croaked, wishing for water. “We found—” All that we’d found piled into my dry mouth and stuck there. Between my fingers, my father’s message chip snapped in two. Entrusted to my care.

  We’d found much in the clouds: Treason, the fledges, why the Spire was dying. I gripped the chip halves tightly, feeling their split edges press my palm. But what we’d lost—No, don’t think that. Nothing is truly lost until we let it go. I cleared my throat. “We’ll find Kirit. We’ll recover what the city needs, rather than allowing it to disappear.”

  9

  SKYTOUCHED

  “Eat,” Wik’s guard said, pushing graincakes into the fledges’ hands. “We’ll find Kirit. We’ll make a search plan.” Although her name didn’t come to mind just then, the guard’s smile was familiar from Mondarath’s post-wingfight celebrations; her brusque orders something I’d heard at wingtest and while fighting alongside her at Spirefall. Her guard-short haircut was new—softly curling dark hair pulled back in a cap—and her usually brassish-red skin was wind-chapped bright pink from many days patrolling the sky. She’d stuck a metal loop through her left earlobe.

  Ezarit caught my quizzical look. “I asked Aliati to guard Wik, given everything that’s been happening, and because he was kind to Kirit when she was ill. You should feel comfortable speaking before her.” A senior councilor’s prerogative, and a kindness, but Ezarit’s words hinted that there was someone she didn’t feel comfortable speaking around.

  The fledges told Aliati and Ezarit, Beliak and Wik about the fall, the net. The Spire. They described falling from the sky with increasing panic, the shock of their experience wearing them thin.

  Aliati handed me a graincake. “You’ll all feel better once you’ve eaten. Then you can tell us everything.”

  “We are telling everything. Stop coddling me.” Aliati might be Wik’s guard on this tier, but she didn’t know everything. I felt more agitated as Beliak’s words struck home. You missed council. You never miss council! And we were about to set out again, at first light. They’d been looking for us.

  That’s what the city was supposed to do: take care of its people. Beliak helped me shrug from my wings. Took my damp cloak and wrapped me in his. I began to shake in the warmth.

  At Wik’s feet lay a silk game board, dyed like the one Doran had showed us. “They call that Justice at Grigrit,” Moc said.

  “Different names all over,” Aliati said. “Same game. On Bissel, they call it Balance.”

  She pulled a handful of tower marks from her pocket and dropped them on the square. “I don’t play, but the board is a useful map.” The marks clicked softly as they landed and knocked together. “Ciel flew from Grigrit to see the council, right? You were headed to Bissel. The way the winds have been lately, your most likely routes were here and here.” She placed two markers and used message cords to connect them to Grigrit.

  She turned to each fledge in turn and asked them where they’d been going. Eked the information out of them, through their panic. Each time a child named a flight path, Aliati placed a piece of silk cord between tower markers. She let me help. I could work and gather my thoughts at the same time.

  The area on the map between Bissel, Naza, Harut, and Grigrit in the southwest grew congested with markers and silk, the Spire at the center.

  Aliati withdrew a metal tool from her robe, round at the top, straight at the bottom. I’d never seen anything like it before. With one finger on a ghost-thin mark in the metal, Aliati placed the straight edge by Bissel’s marker. She stuck her tongue out, thinking, as she turned the metal on the silk square. “This is a guess, but I’ve been measuring my dive angles for wingfights lately. Found I can judge where I’ll end up pretty well. You said you dropped twenty tiers?”

  “Close to. Where did you get that metal?” Mondarath wouldn’t have much like it, nor Bissel.

  “Had it since I was young. Found it a couple of Allsuns before the wingtest, before I moved to Mondarath.” She sounded as if she’d answered that question a lot. Then she refocused on the map. “We’d planned to search for you here.” She touched the marker nearest Grigrit with her finger. “But we’ll search closer to Bissel now for Kirit.”

  She stood, brushing dust from her robes. Lifted her wingstraps to her shoulders.

  “Who will go with you?” Ezarit said.

  “I’ll go alone. I’ll tether to Bissel. I won’t get lost.” The confidence with which she spoke implied she’d done so before. “We can send for more guards once the sun is up.”

  “Wait,” I said. “There’s more you need to know.”

  Secrets and horrors piled up, all trying to emerge first from my mouth. The windbeaters’ foils and the reversed wind. The alcove with the fires and boiling heartbone. The drug that wasn’t muzz. The voices in the clouds and the skymouth husks. I didn’t want to sound skytouched. I wanted them to believe me. To act.

  In council, Doran would appeal to what they understood first and build consensus, so I tried that. “Things are happening in the southwest. Unrest, anger. The wind disappearing.” Beliak and Aliati exchanged worried looks. I pressed on. “Even little things. Grigrit has little food for its Singers. While here?” I gestured at a basket near the fledges.

  Towers in the city varied in height and trappings according to many factors, but the lowest tiers in each tower were all similar in their poverties. The cold, narrow tiers were nearest the clouds’ dangers and subject to all manner of abuse—intentional and not—from above. But this tier looked clean and dry. A cook fire was banked near the core and the sleeping partition blocked the worst of the winds.

  Aliati followed my eyes. “It’s not Mondarath, but Bissel has decent supplies, and is generous with them.” She frowned. “Grigrit? Doran’s already decided that the Singers must appease the city. Why bother feeding them?”

  She was right. I’d wanted Doran’s guidance to learn how to work with city council politics, but even I’d noticed he’d taken a course of action on the Singers well before the vote. I’d seen and chosen not to understand. Now I twisted the silk cord still on my wrist tight, angry with myself for being so obtuse.

  I drank more water. Aliati let me have my fill, then handed me another graincake. I held on to it and wet my lips with my tongue. “Worse, Dix, possibly others, are using the wind—or lack of it—to pull fledges from the sky. To make them work in the clouds.”

  “Could that be a natural phenomenon?” Aliati frowned. “Some kind of wind shadow?”

  “A fledge-dream. A bone-dust nightmare. You’d been sifting Spire rubble the day before.” Beliak looked from the graincake to Aliati as if wanting her to say, “Eat,” again.

  “Not all of us at once.” I was angry no one would take our word. Beliak was trying to look supportive, nodding when I spoke, but confusion shadowed his gaze, and worry too, as if he was wondering whether I’d gone skytouched, and what that meant for him and for Ceetcee.

  If it was this hard to convince him, Aliati, and Ezarit, it would be impossible to convince the council.

  “You could have hit your heads on something,” Aliati said. “There’s plenty down there that’s dangerous.”

  “That doesn’t explain why they fell, though,” Beliak said. I swallowed a bite of graincake. As I chewed, I rolled what Aliati said over in my mind.

  “You’ve been below the clouds?”

  She nodded.

  The connection lit up. The metal tool. Her ease with going alone beneath the clouds. I’ll tether to Bissel. I won’t get lost, she’d said.

  “You’re a scavenger?”

  Ali
ati regarded me, unflinching. “Was. Yes. It was a way to stay alive, before I lived at Mondarath, before I became a guard here.”

  I couldn’t abide scavengers. But I’d flown with Aliati. I’d cheered her team during wingfights. The council had made her a guard. I struggled to match this new information to what I knew about her. Decided I could tolerate it, for now, if she’d listen to me, believe me.

  Ciel brought me the bucket from the platform. The smell proceeded her.

  “What is that?” Beliak asked.

  Wik stood, ashen-faced, his tattoos nearly pulsing at his temples. “Heartbone. Where did you get it?”

  We told them. The more we described, the less they understood. But we had their attention now. Wik seemed to believe us. Ezarit too.

  “Where is this platform now? You’re sure it was supported by skymouth husks?” Ezarit paced, sounding concerned. When we told her we’d had to let it go in order to climb to the tier, she frowned. “Where was the tapping happening?”

  “How far downtower are we?” I still didn’t have my bearings, beyond knowing I was on Bissel.

  “Lowest tier, sixteen down. Northwest,” said Wik.

  “The wind disappeared,” Moc said slowly. “Not like a wind shadow. Worse. Like a downdraft in the Gyre. I fell twenty tiers. More.” His voice was filled with disbelief—he was coming out of his stupor, but he hadn’t been aware enough to remember the mechanism above the plinth.

  His twin came to help him, chin high, ready to argue with adults if she had to. “There’s an artifex down there, at least one. They made a whirlwind.” She spread her hands wide and spun them in the air.

  Aliati shook her head. “That’s not possible.”

  Wik agreed. “Downdrafts require windbeaters and height and windgates, like in the Spire. Nothing that can create one in the open sky.”

  Moc bristled. “It’s true.” He pointed at the wingfoils we’d managed to salvage from the platform. “It happened.”

  “Not even Singers could stop the wind,” Wik continued. A dark cloud crossed his face. “But…” He tilted his head, tired. Worried. “It might be nothing. Before Spirefall, towers were beginning to seek ways to direct vents as Singers did. Looking to speed gliding between towers. They’d asked the Spire for help, for a windbeater or two, but hadn’t received any.”