by Fran Wilde
For the first time in a long time, the curve of his mouth shifted, ticking up into his cheek. I saw his eyes gleam, but that could have been the sunlight.
“Yes,” he said. “Let’s go.”
And we headed to the point where we’d meet and trap a new city.
* * *
When the city stopped and dipped its head to eat one of the groundmouths we’d skirted, we grappled it around its toes. Above us, the bone spires on its back rose in graceful twists, gray and green near the bottom, stark white above. None neared the clouds. Instead a thick ridge of bone connected each tower, the fused plate growing much broader and thicker than the one on the city we’d left.
While Varat was relatively still, Wik shimmied up its calloused, bulbous ankle. He set a grip in one of the wrinkles and tested it. It held.
A trio of bone eaters circled high. One dropped a chunk of carrion in front of the city and then disappeared again.
The city abandoned its invisible meal and began to devour the meat. It kept walking.
“See those follicles in the skin?” Wik pointed. “I don’t think they’re that sensitive. Drive your grips in there, and the city won’t even notice.” I looked up at him and hoped my upper arm strength was going to be enough. My leg had buckled once already, though I’d covered for myself pretty well, by pointing out the groundmouth ridges ahead. Wik hadn’t noticed my limp.
As we pulled ourselves up the city’s ankle, I was having a harder time concealing my pain. I set a grip where he’d suggested. The flank jerked slightly, like a bird would if a gnat was bothering it. Then I set a second one.
You can do this, Kirit. I reached up and pulled with both hands, lifting the rest of me as deadweight. It hurt like anything. I thought back to the Spire, so many Allsuns ago, to my climb from the oubliette and Wik at the top, looking down at me as I struggled.
“You want a tether?” Wik asked.
No. I had never felt anger swell so fast. I was trying to concentrate. “I’ve got it.”
But I didn’t. I slipped and nearly fell back on my bad leg. The pain hurt all the way to my teeth.
“I’ll take the tether.” I hated every word. I didn’t want to need help. But I wasn’t going to get atop this city without it.
Wik braced himself on a ridge near the city’s elbow, put in a grip, and tied the line to it. We both worked to haul me up. When I reached his level, I was drenched with sweat and gasping.
The pain in my leg, however? Nearly completely gone.
“You look pale,” Wik said. He touched my cheek with his palm. “Cold too.” His hand was warm against my skin.
I looked away, searching for something to say to distract him. He was not going to make me go back down. We were here. We would climb.
But I didn’t need to worry. Wik hoisted himself up higher. When he’d reached the city’s shoulder, he dropped the rope again. I’d closed my eyes to rest, but the rope hit me on the head and woke me. “Tie on and climb!”
My fingers fumbled with the knot, but I finally wrapped the line around my chest, under my arms, and then made a loop with the right hand side of the line. Doing so, as tired as I was, relied on many years of practice tying knots. Otherwise, my current lack of coordination would have caught Wik’s attention for sure. I drove the head of the line up through the loop, down and around the feeder line and back up and into the loop again. When tight with pressure on each end, the knot wouldn’t pull apart. Keep going, Kirit.
That climb grew stranger still. The city’s hide seemed to ripple. I heard voices—my mother’s whispering faster, no time. Elna’s don’t fall, Doran and Rumul chiding me, Nat egging me on. Even Dix, laughing at me.
My mother’s voice. I’d longed to hear it again. Ezarit. No time to be afraid.
But the others crowded in. Talked over her. They asked me questions too. How can you get people up on a city without getting trampled? How do you choose who to save?
The second question I waved away. Everyone. You save everyone. You save the city.
The first question I repeated aloud. “I don’t know, how do you think we’ll get everyone up here without getting trampled?” The idea of bringing a tower full of people onto this city appealed, but the mechanics of raising everyone up gave me pause, even as we climbed the thick hide.
As if in answer, the city gave a low growl. Our world shook. We held on.
The hide here was as thick as our own city, but more supple. The give of it as we crawled across a stretch of skin and the bone ridges came into sight far above. It made me a little dizzy. “This is a very young city.”
“Young and hungry,” Wik whispered back. “Look.” Already the city’s head had dipped towards more of the divots in the ground without stopping its walk. It ripped the invisible groundmouths from their holes, at once scattering dirt and releasing a nearly invisible spray of the same liquid that had struck Wik. Some dropped back down to the ground, but most of the spray spiraled up into the air, catching the sunlight as it went, until it seemed to disappear into the clouds.
“What is that?” Wik batted absently at his hair, as if waving away bugs. There wasn’t anything near him that I could see. His hair looked wet instead of dusty.
Again, the scent of smoke and cooked vegetation wafted towards us and I felt for the direction of the breeze.
I couldn’t help myself, I imagined bodies dropping from the cloud in order to feed this city. “Wik, what if there are people living here already?” I asked as if he was right beside me, not trying to haul me up from above. He didn’t answer, but I continued. “I mean, many fliers who went out exploring didn’t return. And it is ridiculous to think that our ancestors were the only ones who had ever climbed a city.”
I was babbling now. And Wik was too high to stop me when I thought I saw my mother circling nearby. I stepped from my perch to reach her. And the rope caught me and I swung, nearly limp, facing out towards the dry plain. My vision blurred.
Wik grunted. The rope line tensed. I began moving up the hide of the city in jerks and starts. The city’s skin scraped at my back, the rope dug into my armpits and hurt. I tried to scramble and help, but I could barely lift my arms. “Do you think they can fly?”
“Who?” Wik said as he lifted me off the tether line and helped me sit on the city’s flat hide. He smiled the kind of smile that melted my heart.
“The people who live on this city! I’ve been telling you about them. We might not look like them. We might not talk like them at all. We couldn’t even read the plates in the midcloud. How do we talk to anyone down here—if there is anyone?” We’d seen signs of civilizations long gone, broken metal, outlines in the dirt that spoke of human-built structures buried deep.
Wik’s face changed as he considered my behavior. “Perhaps they’ll have songs, just like us. You should lie down.”
“Perhaps they’ll eat us, or worse.”
“What could be worse than being eaten? Being eaten alive.” Wik’s eyes shone. He wasn’t laughing. “Lie down.”
“It’s not funny.”
Wik started humming a passage from The Rise.
“Shhhhh,” I said. But my eyes closed.
“Rest,” I heard him say. I felt a tug at my leg. Heard him hiss. He touched the break, and I saw stars behind my eyes. I might have cried out.
I saw Maalik flying away, into the star-filled, daytime sky.
12
NAT, BETWEEN
And Brokenwings returned to find his mates.
My family waited for me within the clouds. Between them and me, calcified bridges draped moss across towers. Trunks that had grown together below began to fork and diverge. Damp bone and dark twists made passages dangerous.
None of these obstacles could stop me.
Ciel and I climbed to the short, creaking span of an ancient bridge. The calcified expanse crackled beneath us as we scrambled to the next tower. We rested in a narrow cave and on spare ledges. We inched our way higher, trying to track the time but grow
ing confused in the clouds. Then in the half-light of day, we found ourselves standing on a terminated bone trunk, far beneath a bone-white bridge and the dark shadow of a structure above it.
“There.” Ciel pointed. “The meadow.” Far above, a bit of moss-covered plinth hung from a neatly cut hole in the shadow. We were so very close.
“Finally.” I pictured my friends and family as I’d last seen them, being taken inside the towers by Dix’s guards. I hoped they’d survived. The thought of being able to finally know tied a knot of relief and worry in my stomach. But my relief was brief.
We were unattainably close. The next bridge between the towers was a much thinner span of calcified rope and bone. Below us on each side of the tower, the mist rippled. The depths were filled with gravity’s hunger, ready to throw two wingless climbers down to the distant ground.
“If we could fly,” Ciel said.
“Unless scavengers have stashed wings here, we can’t.” We would need to cross the bridge one at a time. The span creaked softly in the midcloud wind.
“Maybe there’s something more stable below.” Ciel peered over the edge, then got on her stomach to look closer. Then she gave a small screech and scooted backwards, scraping her hands on the towertop. “Skymouth,” she whispered. “Resting just there.”
“Littlemouths, you mean?” Skymouths didn’t often lurk close to towers, except in the Spire, or if they were hunting. In the midcloud, they preferred coasting breezes in order to hunt. I’d once seen one seek out a bone eater and squeeze it to death. I hoped these weren’t hunting.
Ciel shook her head, cautiously peering over the edge. “Small skymouths. Three of them. On the tower.”
My ragged robe snagged the rough towertop as I knelt beside her. I held myself still, though the damp moss and a sharp lightning-strike smell made me want to sneeze. The glimmer of phosphorescence on the tower side looked layered, interleaved. Three bodies breathed rhythmically, almost as one.
As we watched, one of the skymouths gently peeled away and faded into the depths, its glowing outline disappearing as it sank into the clouds. The others followed.
The damp air made Ciel’s voice hoarse. “Come on, we need to go too.”
“You first.” If the bridge broke under my weight, at least she would get there.
Ciel dug in her pack for spidersilk. She tied a tether around her waist and tossed me the other end. I secured it to an edge of the bone tower and held on as she scaled the last bit of tower to the calcified bridge.
She began to cross, and the bridge creaked again. When she was halfway, she untied the tether and scrambled to the other side. Waved from a perch there. With my heart thudding in my ears, I gathered up the tether and prepared to follow her across.
With each step, the bridge’s creaks and groans grew louder. The bridge was old, but its three-line design was familiar—one broader span of sinew and fiber for the feet, two guide rail spans above. The rough grind of bone against my hands, the crackling beneath my feet, was not a normal bridge crossing. But I was almost to the other side.
After the first guide rope snapped, the bridge tipped, and I leaned hard against the sway. The guide was still attached to the triple tower where Ciel crouched, and I pulled my way forward. As I drew close enough, I tossed the tether line and she tied it to the tower. Ciel pointed to one of the almost-overgrown grips carved in the tower side. “Jump for those!”
I didn’t hesitate. I landed in a heap on a moss-encrusted bone spur. The impact knocked the wind right out of me. Ciel scrambled to my side. The bridge swung, tangled and broken, just behind us.
The crossing had taken moments. I looked up, my vision sparked with stars from the impact. I looked down, over the bone spur’s side. Whispered, “Ciel, look.”
The skymouths had made the same crossing. Two clung to the tower wall, resting, curled up like a mated pair. Overlapping layers of glow and sparkle cast the rest of the tower in darkness. In the distance, the third one detached and began to undulate through the air towards the other two.
I’d never fallen for superstition, but three skymouths, clustering as if for comfort? Made me wonder if they knew already what the people above did not: that the towers were dying.
“Flee,” I whispered. “Go somewhere safe.”
The small community of skymouths huddled closer to each other.
As we watched them resting, my heart calmed its desperate beat. My breathing slowed, and hope bloomed in my chest. We’d come far in our desperate climb.
Not too far overhead was the cave I’d been desperate to reach for so long. Ciel and I began to climb again.
* * *
When we finally neared the cave, my ribs no longer hurt; my hands did not ache in the grips. I felt nothing but the heavy pull of anticipation.
Where are they? Every part of me wanted to see my family alive and well.
Suddenly, the cave mouth appeared, a dark outline framing a flicker of fire. The sharp smell of cooking lichen. Ceetcee, Beliak, Djonn, and Moc gathered around the cookfire, talking.
Where is Elna? I couldn’t see her.
Is she all right? I wasn’t sure I could stand knowing if she wasn’t, not yet.
I stopped climbing and looked up at the flame dancing with the shadows in the cave. I couldn’t move.
Below, days ago, Kirit had stood unmoving before the fallen tower. Had refused to climb. I’d been furious. Now I realized she’d been afraid, trapped between the past and the future.
Now I understood.
Ciel sped up the lichen-soft tower ahead of me. She pulled herself up to the cave mouth and climbed into the cave. Shouts of joy and a baby’s cry drifted down to me before her feet disappeared over the ledge.
My heart felt like it stopped and then restarted with a new rhythm. A baby’s cry.
I’d imagined this reunion for so many nights. Now it was real. They were right there. I could hear them laughing. They were well. I knew that now.
But if Elna was gone? I would learn that too, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Worse, I bore knowledge that would change their world. Not for the better. I had to tell them.
But I couldn’t make my feet move. I stared up, trapped by fear. It was a sour taste in my mouth and a weight in my belly.
A shadow detached itself from the group around the fire and emerged into the mist.
“Nat!” Beliak slid and stumbled from the cave mouth and down tower’s slope, joyous. Ceetcee right behind him.
Our lives had been split apart by wind and gravity. By blackwing attack. I felt like we were meeting again for the first time, but at breakneck, crushing speed. I wanted to tell him everything I had become. To know everything that had happened to him and to Ceetcee. I wanted everyone else to disappear and leave the three of us—the four of us now—alone.
Instead, “Are you all right? Is everyone—” emerged from my mouth instead. A pale shadow of what I felt. Beliak’s robe, torn at the knee, revealed a well-healed wound. His face was thin, and there were rings around his eyes. I felt a sudden jolt of jealousy that Djonn and Ceetcee had been here to help him, then we were embracing and I was crushed in his and Ceetcee’s arms.
Another thin wail tore at us. “The baby’s all right,” she whispered at my look of alarm.
The baby. Ceetcee turned, a shy smile on her face. Strapped on her back, because she wasn’t riding the wind yet, was a tiny, bald miniature of Ceetcee. Piercing dark eyes, skin the color of brass. The baby looked wan, but alive. So did Ceetcee.
I reached out a hand to touch the tiny head. Saw again the scars on my fingers, the dirt beneath my fingernails. My hand hovered in the air. “So beautiful. Healthy? What is her name?” I was afraid of the answer, as much as I was about Elna.
“We’re all right. We can’t spend too much longer beneath the clouds, but for now, she’s fine…” Ceetcee trailed off. “What is it?”
Above us, Ciel and Moc were already arguing. Djonn tried to get them to calm down. “Ciel, slow down,” Moc
cautioned. “You’re making no sense.”
“It’s true!” Ciel said. “Nat!” She waved me up.
Pulling Beliak and Ceetcee along with me, I climbed to the cave where last we’d made a stand against the blackwings, and the city above had tried to kill us.
“Where is Elna?” I finally managed.
“Your mother’s all right,” Ceetcee began. I could breathe again. “Just weak.”
Moc pointed at Ciel, who was now a head taller than her twin. “She says the city’s alive, but it’s dying!”
They all turned to look at me, and Ciel raged, “You’d believe him but not me? Why? We’ve both seen it!”
I held up both hands, forcing Beliak and Ceetcee to let me go, and forcing myself to let them go. “Listen to Ciel. She’s right.”
I looked for Elna but didn’t see her in the dim cave. My heart sank. But with everyone focused on Ciel, I couldn’t risk distracting them from her story. This was why we were here. To convince them to leave the towers. We had to make them listen. I could wait a few moments more to see Elna, so long as she was alive.
Ciel began by describing the fall and our first sighting of the city. “It is so big, this whole cave could fit in one of its eyes,” she said. “And it eats people! It ate Hiroli!”
Some concerned blinking among the adults in the room turned into throat clearing and a raised eyebrow at me, but then Moc said, “Really?”
I nodded. “Ciel tells the truth.”
“What about Dix?” Beliak asked. “Did Dix chase you below? Is she still down there?”
He sounded as if he hoped the city had eaten Dix too.
“We found her hanging on a bone spur near the ground,” I said. “It was a difficult landing.”
“Her blackwing guards are gone too,” Ciel added. “But right now, what you need to know is that there are other cities, just like this one but much smaller. They can walk around, and…” She paused, and I gestured with my chin, Go on, say it. “And attack things. They move pretty slow, but they’re really hard to stop.” She shuddered.
“How big?” Moc said. “The towers take days to fly across.”