by Fran Wilde
“You’re skytouched,” said Councilor Varu, my once-ally, now opponent. I’d made my mistake for sure.
There were murmurs of “he’s not wrong” among the group.
“War is out of the question. Abandonment is different now. We cannot go up. And in going down,” Sidra said, “we’d leave too many people stranded, unable to fly or climb. I won’t leave people behind. And we do not even know what has happened, or why the city roared the way it did.”
Like no roar I can recall.
* * *
As the council meeting ended, a shadow crossed the sun, dark and regular. Except it wasn’t a shadow. I looked up the side of the tower. The edge of War had come to us first.
Urie rushed past me to the balcony, trying to avoid the gathered refugees.
Blackwings rode a platform suspended from skymouth husks filled with lighter-than-air. They guided its passage on the wind using windbeaters’ wings, some that looked old enough to be from the Spire itself.
My fists clenched as I remembered the last time I’d seen something like this platform. When the city council was attacked—and some had blamed Singers. Now we knew that wasn’t true. But the shadow was the same. So many had died then. So much of the collapse of the city’s connections could be traced to that dark moment.
Memories of the council attack continued to flood in. Of Nat, Beliak, and Ceetcee, of my niece and nephew all fighting to survive that moment. Of Kirit and Ezarit lost to the clouds.
Though these blackwings weren’t attacking, and they stayed well away from the still-populated towers. This time, I flew from the balcony with our guards and Sidra by my side to meet them.
The wind whistled in my ears as we flew a circuit. The blackwings drew down on us with their bows. We halted our approach once I was within shouting range, and they did not fire.
Several blackwings seemed to be sketching on large bone tablets. Making a map? It could be more than that, I realized with a jolt. The blackwings might be coldly surveying the north, as a way to determine their next move.
I hailed them. “We’ll trade able hands to your towers in return for medicine for ours.”
Laughter, brief and sharp. The first I’d heard since before the quake, peppered the sky. “Your help is not wanted here. Any medicine, we’ll keep with us.” Their weapons glittered in the dust and sun.
“We’re still one city,” I said. “We can help each other.”
“Save yourselves,” said a blackwing on the platform. His wings were edged with glass.
They didn’t speak to us further or look our way; instead, they finished their survey and returned to the south.
Sidra and I turned back to Mondarath, shaken by the encounter. “What could they want?” she asked. “What about their people who need help?”
How could the blackwings not see we were weaker working at cross purposes? We needed a bridge. “What about supplies we need that they have?” I thought about those two precious jars of honey and the packet of medicine at the market. There wasn’t much left here. And about the artifexes and the lighter-than-air. “How will we last with only the goods the northwest can make on its own?”
Whatever they were up to, it was an incursion. I turned to Sidra. “Now, see?” I said. “That is an act of war. Or at least provocation. They were assessing what was worth taking and what was best left to rot.” We had no way of knowing, but it was safe to prepare for the worst. “We need to get our hands on more of the lighter-than-air immediately.”
We landed on Mondarath. Sidra, still shaken and pale, nodded instead of arguing.
“The southwest’s artifexes have obviously figured out more of the formula if they’re using gas for excursions.” Urie sounded worried that I wouldn’t believe him.
I wasn’t sure I did.
But he kept speaking. “We’ll find my aunts. I don’t care if we have to kidnap them from the southwest. If they’ve done it, and showed others how—” He didn’t finish the sentence.
Kidnap. The whisper went through the tower. I looked around. I didn’t kidnap or steal any more than I advocated for war. But I had come close. Again, I questioned my motives, my approach. I sounded too much like a Singer for my own ears. Who knew what I sounded like to the others. The councilors returned to their towers with few decisions made; the council ended in disarray.
I had to do better. We had to work together, or we would fall apart completely. Fear serves no one, Macal.
* * *
Over the next days, Mondarath and the remaining towers struggled to pull together. We marked tremendous losses on bone tablets and gathered for Allsuns.
The new council, nine of us, looked up at the briefly starlit sky and promised those who’d been lost we would save the city for those who survived.
We sang Remembrances, my voice lifted and twined with Sidra’s, with the council’s, with those we’d accepted into our community as refugees from the south. Their words were slightly different, and we heard the off notes, the extra syllables in the song that lifted from our tower. We kept singing anyway. I clasped Sidra’s hand, Urie’s shoulder. We sang together, even if we sang differently.
When we finished Remembrances, most gathered on a single tower, the councilor from Amrath turned to me, her robe torn, a bandage on her arm. “How will you choose, Macal?”
“Choose?” The wind was blowing in the wrong direction, and Urie was having a hard time getting to the southern towers.
“We know once you have enough lighter-than-air, you’ll leave. How will you choose who goes on the floats, who gets to leave the city?” Councilor Varu looked at me, bone-faced.
“No one is leaving unless we all go together,” I said. The thought of leaving the city on floats, to be blown in whatever direction without anchors, terrified me. A float would have some direction, but eventually the gas would run out and we would sink into the clouds, never to be heard from again.
Amrath pursed her lips. “That’s a lie. What you’ve already said about the lighter-than-air and the plinths? That proves it.”
“You’re altering my meaning.”
“Towerfolk already say you’re drawing up a tier’s worth to fly from here. There’s not enough lighter-than-air stored, even in the southwest, for more than that. That Doran’s plan was similar, before he fell.”
How did she hear those rumors? Varu? The blackwings that had infiltrated Amrath’s market, had they stayed after the disaster?
“There is some gas left, but if we find artifexes, we can make more.” I hoped we could. “And we can do that much more efficiently if we stay near the bone towers, the city.” Our birthplace, whether we were Singer or tower. “Eventually, we can rebuild the city, and strengthen it again, if we have enough artifexes working on the problem.”
Varu, who’d been quiet so far, spat on the balcony. A fair measure of rudeness when one could easily spit over the edge, into the clouds. “We cannot and will not survive without figuring out what happened. Like you said. Someone has to explore. Who will go?”
The clouds again. “The songs say—”
He held up a hand. “I know what the songs say. They say we rise above the clouds, to safety. That the clouds are dangerous. No one returns. Not the cloudbound, not the Skyshouter, nor Brokenwings. Not your Singer brother. The clouds let no one go.”
There was a wisp of hope they were still alive down there. “We can use the tiers that are as close to the cloudline as possible,” I finally conceded. It was a dangerous thing, but I believed Nat and Kirit had survived that far, just a few tiers into the clouds. Supposedly, they’d been spotted at Laria.
“If we are going to stay near the towers,” Sidra said loudly, for she knew that was my plan, “we should also find a scavenger or two. They’ll know where the instability lies, if anyone does. Or maybe even how far down this goes.” Her words felt dark, as if the city itself had broken Laws.
“A good approach. Find the instability, fix it, and rise,” the Varu councilor said.
&n
bsp; Scavengers were a good idea. “Who will go?” I asked the group. Volunteers would be making themselves cloudbound, the worst punishment for the city’s worst offenders.
A roaring silence. No one stepped forward. One towerman cleared his throat but did not speak.
“No one’s heard from the southwest in days,” the councilor from Amrath added. “We have family there. But no messages, nothing. My partner wants me to check it out. I’ll follow Urie to Grigrit. We’ll try to find the artifexes and sneak them out, as well as get my family.”
“Then I will go below,” I finally said, after no one else volunteered.
I was a Magister. I’d never imagined myself as leader. Sidra had. I’d stepped away from the Spire’s desire to control the city when I was young. After that, I taught others. Flight. Laws. I’d sought out talent among the towers for artifexes and leaders. I’d been a connector, a bridge. Not a hero.
Now I was making life-or-death decisions for my neighbors and their families. It didn’t sit well with me at all.
To my left, my partner stared at me, whispering, “Cloudbound.” Her voice shook new cadence into that one word. The idea didn’t sit well with her either.
“Leading by example,” I whispered.
“You can’t. We need you here.”
I said it quietly, for her ears only. “This time, I will go. I am the one who must.”
She shook her head, brushed off her sleeves, and said, “Then I’ll join you there.”
On the towertop, with light already breaking Allsuns’ next dawn, I studied her face, determined to remember her eyes, her cheekbones, every wind line.
“No.” I wished I could have said anything else. “I need you to stay and guide the city. Both of us cannot go.”
She closed her eyes, drawing shutters over her thoughts. Then opened them again. Looked hard at me, tracing the line of my chin with a finger. “I will help guide the city, and you will return.” It was not a question.
“I will.” Mine was a promise.
Sidra would work with the council to hold the towers together. And I would find the instability in the city below and help repair it if I could.
11
KIRIT, BELOW
Skyshouter and Nightwing climbed new cities formed of bone
In the time it took to fight off the groundmouth, the young city had moved again.
Wik and I walked on, lying to each other about our injuries, dismayed by how far our goal had traveled away from us.
“We may never catch it,” Wik muttered. He scanned the distance, seeking other cities.
Our world was parceled out in painful steps. The red soil crunched and slid beneath our feet; the strip of blue sky taunted us before it disappeared above the thick cloud above. The sun beat down hard. The very ground reached out for us. I refused to disappear into this landscape without a fight. I also refused to destroy it.
The new city had begun to turn again and seemed to keep to a looping path. As we walked, I realized there was a deep track running near us. I pointed it out to Wik. “Looks like regular passage here. Like a family would wear in bone after years in the same tier.”
He nodded. “Might not be smart, but they seem pretty territorial.”
Were cities as territorial as towers? Our own towers had been on the verge of tearing each other apart. But we’d also spent many years weaving a city together with bridges and songs. We could do it again. What kinds of songs might our community have made out of a landscape like this one?
“Having seen them fight, I’m not surprised at the territory keeping,” Wik continued, breaking my train of thought. He held up his hands to make a frame and watched the city cross the horizon from his left hand to his right. “These are slow, though. We could find a way to climb them.” His words were cautious.
We’d already seen one build up speed and attack.
The deep track traced a path from water source—a stream running through the red dirt, and disappearing at intervals—to a thick group of groundmouths, and back. The city was too big to fear the groundmouths, or to think about them as anything other than a snack.
“Look.” Wik knelt. Pulled another strip of black silk from the sand. This one smaller and crisp with dried blood. “The blackwing made it this far.”
Had they reached the new city before us? Probably not if they were wounded. I tried to determine how far they might have had to walk, hurt. Wondered if they could have made it. “Probably not much farther.”
Wik set his jaw and said nothing.
* * *
If we survived, our songs would have to change. Our old songs gave us a bone forest, The Rise—when we’d been on a city’s back the whole time. What new songs would come now? How would our community adjust? Would we be able to change?
We had to catch a city to find out.
“What should we call this one? In case we catch it?” Though that seemed increasingly impossible. I gritted my teeth against the fire that was coursing across my leg with every step. “How about Varat, after the tower Varu?” The tower where my mother had made her final home.
Wik nodded, looking ahead again. “Cities in motion are far different than a city trapped under its own weight. You were right to be worried earlier.” He’d been thinking ahead after all. “What if Varat’s smart? As smart as the bone eaters?”
The bone eaters had adjusted their lives to our presence. Could an active city do the same?
The other cities distantly visible on the horizon seemed to have similar loops, ones that crisscrossed in places and left tracks with stops and starts across the broad, dry stretch of land.
Once we’d sheltered in a cloudbound cave. My own city had pronounced me a traitor; blackwings had killed my mother, my friends. The scavenger Aliati had shown me how to gauge distance with string and a game-board map. Not knowing whether I’d see Aliati again was a dull ache. But what she’d taught me, and all of us sheltering in that cave, was how to plan based on known routes and measurements. I measured the distance against my thumb and forefinger, as Wik had done.
“If that city takes the same route,” I said, pointing, “we can catch it.” I tried to judge how long it would take to reach a certain point on the loop it walked. Maybe soon. “It doesn’t need to stop if we’re ahead of it. We can try to climb up one of its legs, use the grips if we have to.” How had our ancestors done it? Likely when the cities were much smaller.
“If we use our grips, it might try to bite us.” Wik sounded dubious. “Better to wait for it to stop and feed.”
I wouldn’t wait. Our friends counted on us finding a new home. “Who knows when it will stop again?” Would I be able to climb at all? I brushed that worry away. I had to climb. “Let’s try.”
We’d made rudimentary claws and gathered bone- and metal-tipped arrows before leaving the city. We’d sorted through tiers of rubble looking for more finds. Much of it had been gross and ruined, but there were a few items, including metal I couldn’t recognize—not brass, but heavier—that we left behind as too much to carry with us. We took the knives and spears, and a smashed pair of lenses that reminded me very much of my mother’s.
In the rubble, Wik had found the remains of a small windup toy, a tiny city that walked a few noisy paces in the dust when a metal knob at its side was twisted. It had no towers, just a plate ridge on its back. Its head snapped back and forth at the air. It walked a circle, clacking, its metal parts whining, and then fell over. He held it in his palm now. Our past hadn’t forgotten the cities. The memories had just fallen away, or been discarded as we rose.
“What would Djonn make of all of this?” I wondered aloud to calm my nerves about climbing the new city.
Wik shook his head. “He’d probably take measurements for a harness or a weapon.”
That was true. “Though he might approach tasks differently on the ground.” As I was.
Once I would have rushed in. Once I’d have claimed this city as my birthright. The ground an adventure I deserved to hav
e. I knew so much more now. I knew that the cities didn’t care who was deserving and who wasn’t. To a city, we were food and brief flickers of movement in the sky. We barely registered.
Our songs would have to change to reflect that change. If we survived.
The only person I could share this new realization with was Wik.
But he already knew how much destruction I’d caused, and the lessons I’d learned on the way down to the ground.
“Being on the ground changes all of us,” he added.
“Would you kill another city now that you know more?” I asked. Would those who came after us do so?
He didn’t look at me. “I might.” Less sure than before.
How would the others change when they came down to the ground? Would they elect to come?
I imagined that life in the city was trying to return to normal, everyone keeping pace, going about their business, pretending all was well, while maneuvering around the unlucky. The thought made me shiver with cold and sorrow. They would know soon.
We had to help them, even if we could not get to them.
“When Nat brings Djonn down from the clouds and we find a safe place that’s out of biting range of cities and groundmouths, you should ask them what they’d do differently down here,” Wik said. He glanced at my leg, then looked away, jaw clenched. “If it’s not too late.”
“How much time do we have to find a home for them? Not much.” I spoke forcefully, angry again with him, with everything. We wouldn’t stop until we’d found home. “We won’t give up.”
“On your wings, Risen,” he said, then bit his lip. His sense of humor was as broken as the city.
My voice rose again. “Wik! No one is ‘Risen’ now, nor once the city falls.” No one alive, in any case. Only the ghosts we left above. Ezarit. Doran. So many ghosts.
Wik stared into the distance, at nothing. At his own ghosts.
I tugged at his hand, distracting him, apologizing without words. “Help me catch Varat. Then we’ll see.”