by Fran Wilde
“Your wings? Can you fly?” I asked Sidra.
“I think so, with repairs.” The press of bodies on the balcony had crumpled Sidra’s right wing. She smoothed the silk with shaking hands, then removed a broken batten and looked around for a replacement.
The dust in the air made everything feel tightly constrained, as if we were trapped within bone. We heard the sounds of our own breathing, close.
Farther away, shouts and cries echoed.
I pulled the winghooks from over my shoulder and looked at them. They wouldn’t help replace Sidra’s batten. My breath caught. What if the city shook again while she was fixing her wings? “Hurry, Sidra.”
The jolt had been severe enough that many had crumpled wings, some beyond repair. Sidra traded out battens with a neighbor until she had full support, though not full power. “This will have to do.” Raq found Urie an extra pair of wings, green with whorls of gold, slightly damaged but still flyable.
We were ready to fly when, with a rumble, the light’s angle shifted.
Shadows grew in new places. The birds lifted from the towers and flew off. The entire city listed slightly east, and citizens locked arms and grabbed on to bone spurs again. I smelled spilled chicory, heard someone sobbing.
Sidra knotted her fingers in my robe. “Macal,” she whispered.
“We’re still here.” For now, that was all I knew. That was all that mattered.
“Still here,” she echoed. Her fingers tightened, holding on to me, rather than the tower.
As quickly as it had started, the motion stopped, and we looked around, shocked at the difference a few moments made.
Densira’s top six tiers were gone. While Viit looked steady enough, many of its residents clung to its high side. Five citizens still swung from the bridge’s remains, their wings missing or damaged. Several guards swooped to their aid.
From this distance, I could not tell friends from strangers, but it did not matter.
I launched into the dusty air and aimed for the bridge. Behind me, Sidra shouted for others to do the same. The city I’d known and loved since I left the Spire was gone. In its place was a mass of broken bone towers and red dust. Through the haze, I could see a handful of mostly intact tiers. Others, like Bissel, had disappeared completely.
In twos and threes, we moved the people on the bridge to the safety of our tiers and returned to the sky.
Sounds of crying. Trapped sounds. Singer training had sharpened my ears, and I could hear what other rescuers could not. In Densira’s broken topmost tiers, I heard wailing.
After frantic searching, I saw a tiny foot, toes moving with every cry. A child’s leg pinned beneath a bone column. Gently, I lifted the column away and raised the small boy—for it was a boy, dusted like a ghost—to my chest. “We’ll fly to Mondarath,” I said. The boy looked at me, mute from fear.
“You’ll be safe there,” Sidra promised, another child in her arms.
Moments ago, what was wrong with the city had been a topic of open debate. Now what was wrong was obvious.
We flew through clearing dust to Mondarath and gave the children to a family who had set up healer stations in their tier. Their floors were filled with bodies, the air with moans. I saw Dojha there, tending a young woman.
When I returned to the sky, the dust had cleared, and I could count towers nearby, including Mondarath—eleven within my line of sight here and in the south.
Eleven.
Out of more than twenty north of the Spire and several dozen more south of it.
Another set of cracks, like thunder from below, crossed the sky. A balcony tier on Viit rippled.
“Get your people out of there,” I heard Urie yell. He’d been flying citizens to safety, like the rest of our tower guard. But his warning came too late.
The cracking sounds continued until the tier sheared down the side of Viit, taking the balconies below with it. Screams ruptured the air again.
“We are so tiny here, so few against a city coming apart. How do we recover?” Another guard panicked.
“We’re together in this,” Sidra said. “We’re not few.” Her voice, a calming breeze. The guard settled. I knew what it cost her, and I wished I could hold her hand for strength.
“Bring everyone you can to Mondarath, then Varu,” I said. I hoped the blackwings would stand down in light of the disaster. “Those seem to be the most secure towers in the north.” Somehow our tower had stood firm. It had no bridges to pull and sway against the shaking. Amrath also stood, damaged but still upright. Naza, close by, was cracked in half, its core wall exposed and several tiers to the south completely gone.
Rich smells soured the wind throughout the morning. When the shaking began, sharp undernotes of brass and blood had mixed with heartbone. Now those scents turned to rot and spoilage.
I drew closer to Mondarath, taller now than its neighbors. Those other once-proud towers had broken off at the higher tiers, or fallen into the clouds. The sight made my breath catch, and my next words, spoken to the still-circling guards, came as a rush of emotion. “Get everyone as low as you can. Get down to the lower tiers.”
The upper tiers were no longer safe. The cracked towers were no longer safe. A rotten smell permeated the air. The city’s quake was one part of a puzzle. The rotten smell another. But how far down did the cracks go? What had caused the quake? We would need to know.
Coming from the east, Urie appeared, flying roughly, and burdened. When he landed beside me, I saw he carried two smaller fledges, both uninjured, both crying. The children’s weeping father stumbled through the air behind him, looking for a place to land safely on the balcony. There was none. “Don’t land. Go down,” I waved him off and pointed. “We’ll bring the children to you.”
But the man wouldn’t listen. Instead he furled his wings in the air and crashed to the balcony, stepping hard on an injured woman. Her companions rushed the man and dragged him towards the edge.
“Stop!” I put the full force of command into my voice. “Let him go. He only wants his family, as you do.” And, miraculously, they stopped. Let go his robe and returned to tend to their own.
Urie had stayed and helped us. He hadn’t needed to. I clasped his arm in the tumult. “Thank you, Urie Mondarath. You are welcome here.”
But even as I did so, a song echoed in my mind. I recognized it as an old Singer’s tune, but nothing more, and pushed it away. Not now. I bent to help the wounded. To wonder who among the survivors would help me lead this group, with no signs of safety around us.
Later, I would remember the song. It was the kind of song taught to very young Singers in times of emergency and grief, one that had no real meaning when the city was safe. A singsong rhythm. A Law, really, something old that dug deep into memory and remained there until it was needed:
Gather in safety and remove
To highest of towers, away from cloud and fear.
Abandon. The song for evacuating a tower. And it could not help us now.
7
KIRIT, BELOW
Then two went far and two climbed home
My city fell around me, and I could not save it.
Bone shards struck the cities’ hides and the dusty ground. The earth shook. That was frightening enough. Worse, familiar objects—broken wings, parts of a loom, small treasures long carried up from tier to tier—now plummeted, their value rendered false and surreal by the drop.
I choked on dust and bone, stunned. Saw a cup, flattened; a spoon, bent. I focused on those so that I did not have to see what else fell.
But I heard it fall. I heard it until I could not listen, until the sound of now blended with the sound of the council falling long ago, falling around me in the clouds. I could not close my ears, no matter how much I wanted to.
Wik dragged me away from the city’s side. Nat and Ciel scrambled after us. We huddled in the open, waiting out the shaking and shattering, for what seemed whole lifetimes.
Are you all right? they asked each oth
er. Each time someone asked me, I lied mutely, nodding, Yes, I’m all right. I was not all right. None of us were.
When it grew quiet, Ciel whispered, “Which tower fell? What quadrant?”
“No telling,” Wik said. He didn’t correct tower to towers, though I knew it had to be more than one. “From that far up and us so turned around? No knowing until we can see the wreckage.”
I’d opened my eyes, now I shut them again. Nat, gray as bone, knelt beside me. “It cannot die.” Why speak of it. Why say anything.
We tried not to talk too much. Closed mouths, eyes, noses. Drowned in the torrential smashed air of our city.
“Let it be a tower long abandoned,” a voice murmured, strange and hollow. My voice. I tried to stop speaking, but couldn’t. My mouth filled with grit. “Let it have been empty and so far gone already.”
But we all knew that was unlikely. A broken cup, a bent spoon, shattered wings told us otherwise.
Finally, the dust cleared. The clouds, when we could see them again, glowed with a hint of sunrise. The silence was broken now and then by more small pieces of bone hitting the ground, but no more towers fell near us.
The wreckage spread so far, it seemed to touch the horizon. The city cast a strange shadow as the sun came up: its spires were tangled and bent. Two giant bodies lay low and close.
What was left of Nimru leaned against our former home. Its spires jammed against our city’s bone ridge below the cloudline at sharp, jagged angles. The fall of debris continued, a soft patter on the ground.
That sound, like a heavy rain, was the loudest in the world.
Debris littered the desert around the city. We were painted pale with the dust of it. In the distance, the air swirled and lifted, reaching for the sky.
Had skymouths been brought to the ground by the disaster? Was that a dust-limned tentacle out there on the ground? I rubbed my eyes, and the vision disappeared.
When the birds returned, they circled to the ground to inspect the wreckage. They avoided the towers. Large birds first, then the smaller ones. The bone eaters loomed, then began lifting pieces of bone away.
To eat them. To feed the remains to the city.
No.
Though I’d known the bone eaters were coming and what they would do, my stomach flipped over, then hung there. I fought my own memories of driving away the birds from my mother’s body, even as I realized this horror had bought us a chance.
“Wik,” I whispered. He’d moved from our shelter. Stood looking at our dying city, and at Nimru, the city we’d tried to turn. I was not loud enough. “Wik!” I scrambled to join him.
When our city breathed its last, which might be soon, the towers above would not survive. But for the moment, the bulk of our city rested upright, propped by the fallen spires of its sibling.
We stared at the wreckage. Wik began collecting things from the rubble: a brass spear, arrows, bone hooks, grips. He did not speak.
“We have food, both for us and the city,” I said. “Carrion and vegetation, both. We can sift through the wreckage for supplies.”
“We can also climb Nimru’s remaining spires,” Nat added. “And go back up.”
He saw it too.
“And then what?” Wik asked quietly. “We’ll have to convince an entire city we speak an impossible truth.”
“How long do we have?” I tried to judge the angle of the city as it rested against Nimru. Would it collapse first, or roll on its side, like Corat had? How much time?
The city opened a huge eye. Heaved a breath. Still alive.
Wik cleared his throat. “With the food supply and what the city eats, we might have a couple of moons. Fourteen or fifteen days.” His voice sounded sure. His eyes, though. Those hawk eyes, normally so focused. His eyes darted everywhere.
Even as I hesitated, calculating, Nat and Ciel rushed forward.
“Fourteen days!” Ciel said, already scrambling up Nimru’s lower limb.
“Come on, Kirit!” Nat yelled.
My legs wouldn’t move.
“We need to find a place to take them when they come down!” As I said it, I knew I was right. Here, at the bottom of the city, they would be exposed to heat and damp, to predators. They would not be able to fly away. “We have to find them refuge, sanctuary.”
I sounded brave, but I was afraid. I couldn’t face the wreckage of the city above.
A city I’d helped destroy when I broke the Spire so many Allsuns ago.
“Do that later, Kirit! We go up and get them down now!” Nat climbed on the first chunks of bone spires. Ciel yelled, and he hauled her up too.
My knees locked. My chest constricted. I couldn’t go back up.
Wik, his eyebrows drawn together in concern, turned to stare at me. “I didn’t know Nimru would slip. That it would fall like this. How could I not know?” His words were so quiet.
He took a breath and coughed. Covered his tattooed face with a scarred hand.
When he straightened, he turned back to our companions, stronger now. “Think for a moment! Going back up now is like throwing yourself to the clouds. It’s not safe. Where will you be if the city rolls and the towers collapse?” He gestured to the spires of both cities, so precariously intersected.
“We have to go up now. It’s their last chance,” Ciel protested.
“It will be mayhem up there. Who will believe you? What will you tell them? That we’ve been living on this”—Wik pointed to the city—“like fleas on a bird? They’ll throw you right back down again.”
“We still need to find a new place to shelter,” I added. “Now more than ever.” My stomach curdled, unhappy with my choices.
Ciel straightened, fingers clutching the bone tower, the set of her chin fierce. “I will tell them that if they stay above the clouds, they’ll fall and die. And I have to go back up because there will be mayhem. And Moc is there in the middle of it. There’s a little time now. And there is a way up. I must try.” She was shouting. Tears ran tracks through the dirt on her cheeks.
Wik put his hands up in defeat, but his face was resolute. “You’re right. Kirit is too.” His eyes still darted up and down, studying the wreckage. The horizon. “We split up. You get them, we’ll find a place for them.”
High on the ridgeline, my wing-brother, Nat, watched me, saying nothing. The look in his eyes was one that would stay with me longer than any Lawsmark. Betrayal. Abandonment.
In his eyes, I was turning my back on our city.
In my own eyes, I’d already done much more than that.
I’d killed the city long before I knew what it was. I was not Spirebreaker, nor Skyshouter.
I was Citykiller.
Now I had a chance to undo the damage. To step away from what I’d wrought and find a way to begin again.
No time to hesitate. How many times had I heard that, from my mother, from my own lips? I turned from the cities and faced my future, just as Nat and Ciel faced theirs. Over my shoulder, I said, “Strength to your wings. We’ll meet again, here.”
I could not say more. More would mean good-bye.
Nat spoke, finally, his voice thick with emotion. “Maalik will stay with you. Take care of him. Get him strong again, and you can signal us when you find our home.”
A whistle by my ear. A wing brush against my cheek, like soft fingers. Small claws pricked my shoulder. A moment’s forgiveness? The whipperling nestled in the collar of my robe. I felt lighter with him there, and heavier. His soft breaths became a reminder of my obligation.
I turned for a last look at my friend. Nat might not make it, nor Ciel. Wik and I might not survive either. But we had to try. “A moon. No more. I will signal you. Safe passage.”
Nat waved and, without another word, continued his climb. Up. Up. Up.
We had a chance. Our last chance, to rescue the city.
8
NAT, BETWEEN
On birdback, through cloudburst, so close to home
Three Allsuns ago, what I wanted most was a
good hunting bow. A new set of wings. Goose and gryphon for my family, comfort for my mother. That’s what mattered.
What I wanted most now was to make it to the top of a fallen tower. To climb into the clouds. To save my friends and family.
Three Allsuns ago, I would have called that cloudtouched.
Now I picked splinters of rotting bone from my fingertips as I climbed.
Ciel scrambled ahead of me. I’d convinced her to use a tether, in case she slipped. “And in case you slip,” she’d replied. But I couldn’t get her to pace herself. She’d scramble a few tiers as fast as she could, then have to stop and rest. Each rest became longer, her breathing shallower. When she slipped, she grazed shins and elbows. She kept going.
When she rested next, I helped pull splinters from her forearms. I didn’t lecture her. I understood her momentum; all I wanted to do was keep moving too. One step closer to my family—to my mother, Elna; to Beliak and Ceetcee—was better than where I’d been the moment before. And each stop to rest slowed us more than an even pace would have. My frustration grew.
When I’d seen them last, Beliak lay injured. Ceetcee’s belly was growing bigger, and Elna, weakened from her descent into the clouds, had sickened. Now that we were moving towards them, my fears for them grew too.
“You can keep going, Nat,” Ciel said at one such stop. She rested in the crook of a bone spur rendered soft and green by moss and rime. “I’ll catch up.” She returned to sucking on a desplintered finger, trying to numb the sting. Hiding how fast her breathing was, how her ribs were working like bellows.
“This looked a lot easier from the ground,” I said, giving her time. Easier at least than cutting steps in the harsh, unscalable bone ridge. The collapsed spires from Nimru had helped with that. But now the climb had grown repetitive, the clouds loomed, and we were still far away. Fifteen days to get up and back down. It felt impossible.
I tossed a bone shard in the air and caught it, thinking. No more throwing things off the towers. Not when I risked hurting someone below.
Above, the gray expanse was lit red by the day’s second sunset as the sun descended below the cloud again and pressed upon the horizon. The cloud’s underside moved and turned slowly above us, still at least a day away.