by Fran Wilde
I coughed. “Some do change.” I hoped it was true.
The sky rolled past above us, a roiled gray cloud tinged with second sunset. Puffs of dust rose far below as each foot struck ground.
Even as we descended, the dizzy feeling of being in motion wouldn’t go away. Wik looked green as well. Only Dix seemed unfazed. She hung on my back, arguing with us.
“We should leave her,” Wik said again. “You could drop her.”
“And drop the bird too,” Dix said. “Her precious bird. Can’t even fly, can it?” Her voice seemed to get louder the hotter it got.
“I’ve seen Maalik fly,” I said. It was the truth. The whipperling had flown up several times, only to come right back to my hand. I looked at Wik. “Besides, we can’t leave her here. She’s our problem.”
One hand below the other, gripping the fibrous ropes. The pull of Dix’s weight against my grip.
Since she’d gathered her cache of stolen things off of Varat, Wik had been talking about dropping Dix. He’d proposed making her wear them as Lawsmarkers. Instead, he had to carry them, while I carried her.
I tired quickly, but I could feel Maalik moving in Dix’s robe. The fast beat of his heart twitched against my right shoulder blade. Wik looked like he was chewing over ways to leave Dix sooner that involved her not being alive.
“Wik. We can’t kill her either.” No more killing, not if we could avoid it. Dix was half dead on her own already. And she was right: any fall would crush Maalik.
In the long pause between us, Dix simpered and looked pleadingly at me over my shoulder. I glared at her as well as I could.
“I might not have been thinking that,” Wik grumbled, coming to a halt on the city’s side. He made a show of checking our supplies and the things Dix had stolen. Finally he straightened. “She’ll stay with us, As long as we can tie her to something so she won’t get in the way or steal anything else.”
Dix didn’t look like she was going anywhere. The flight from Varat’s cells had exhausted her. “When we get to the ground, you want to bind her hands, go ahead.”
Wrapping her wounded arm tighter around my clavicle, Dix drew Maalik from her robes with her good hand. She began squeezing the bird. “No ropes.”
Maalik sounded a soft trill. A warning of pain to come.
“No ropes,” I said quickly.
She put the bird back in her robe and sighed. “Kirit, when will you learn? Caring about living things is inconvenient. It hurts too much when you lose them.”
I couldn’t not care. We needed Maalik. We’d get him back. Dix had to sleep sometime.
Maalik was Nat’s favorite whipperling. His only surviving whipperling. He’d entrusted the bird to me, with the purpose of finding a home for all of us. If Maalik died, Nat’s forgiveness when I walked away from the city could die with him. Maalik had to stay alive.
Our descent continued. Even Wik’s hands and feet trembled with the effort. We were almost to the city’s knee. Navigating over the joint would be tricky while it was in motion. The healer was nowhere in sight. And Dix wouldn’t be quiet.
“You’ve lost your edge, Kirit. That sharpness that made you not care for consequences.” Dix shook her head. The city’s skin was baggier around the knee, harder to get a grip on. Dix was growing heavier. I needed a break, but I wanted to start looking for a new city quickly. And the map had indicated there was one close by.
She was wrong. I’d always cared. I just hadn’t seen how widely consequences rippled. I gave in to her needling. “What do you want now, Dix?” Power? Control?
“I want a safe place for me and my people to live,” Dix said.
“You have no people,” Wik said. He reached the knee and tied a spidersilk line to a grip. Then threw the line down. It reached almost to the foot of the city’s hind leg. “Go on. I’ll take Dix for a while.” We traded burdens.
So first Dix and Wik, and then I descended on the spidersilk. Wik navigated very well at first, but Dix’s weight, and her arguments, wore on him, and he tired and slipped.
“Careful!” Dix cried.
“I should let you drop,” Wik muttered. But for my sake, he wouldn’t risk hurting Maalik any more than I would, and Dix knew it. Wik stopped and rested for a moment. Then began descending again.
She didn’t listen. “You could help me capture Varat. You could live there, in that beauty.”
“We would never do that.” I spat the words.
The city slowed then, and the ground stopped moving so fast beneath us. We inched down farther. The grueling descent made harder by Dix’s nonstop taunting.
“We can’t take her back home,” Wik said. He was right, but his phrasing shook me.
Our dying city was still home to him. It hadn’t been my home for so long. I wanted the fresh start.
“Who would you be in a new city, Kirit?” Dix wondered from Wik’s back. “Afraid to kill anything, unwilling to fight? Certainly the city will need you to fight.” As we neared the city’s foot, puffs of red dust grew into small clouds that got in our eyes and mouths.
“Who will you be, Dix?” I replied. Annoyance crept into my voice. “The same as you’ve always been? Hungry for power? Or would you change, if you could? If we’re allowing for people who have done so much harm to change.”
She’d done it again, found the heart of my fears, and brought voice to them. If we found a new home, I wouldn’t bring my past with me. I’d set it aside and become something new. I wanted to be one thing: one Kirit. Not Kirit Densira, Notower, Spire, Spirebreaker, Skyshouter, not Kirit Citykiller. I wanted to be me, to be home.
I wanted that home to be something safe, as Dix said she did. Something I could not kill.
“Come on.” Wik tugged at my sleeve. “We’re very close now.” The ground’s imperfections, the wide track that was the city’s normal path, spread before us. The city itself began moving again, slowly at first. We were going to have to jump.
The motion of the city’s foot swept dirt into the air. “Hurry,” Wik said. “I can’t see the ground. I don’t know what a good landing spot is.”
A white cloth fluttered on a small hill. The healer. Still helping us? “There.” I pointed. Then I jumped, rolling away from my injured leg.
The impact hurt anyway. But when I stood, my leg seemed sturdy enough.
Dix and Wik landed not far from me, rolling in the dust from the city’s motion.
The healer was nowhere to be seen. A piece of their shift was stuck to one of the silver plants. An accident? Maybe. I took it and tucked it into my satchel.
Wherever the healer was, I hoped to return the silk to them. To thank them, somehow.
When we regrouped by the hill, Dix surprised me by gently handing over Maalik without protest. “A promise is a promise.”
I gave the bird a piece of the graincake I’d pocketed at the healer’s on Varat. Smoothed his feathers. He lifted and flew a circle around my head, once, twice, and then settled on my shoulder and let loose a high-pitched screech at Dix.
Dix laughed. “You too, whipperling.”
Wik turned to get his bearings so Dix couldn’t see his amusement. It was hot on the ground, though not as hot as it had been when we first fell. “There,” he pointed. “That’s the city from the map.”
We headed in that direction, hoping that this one would be uninhabited. Working our way around the groundmouths hiding in the dirt.
* * *
We’d made it a fair way over the horizon, back towards home, when Varat’s bone eaters came for us.
Three dark birds cruised overhead. Their shadows patterned danger on the ground. I knew that danger. Braced for it.
“Wik!” I pulled on his sleeve. There was nowhere to hide in the open desert. The birds circled once, twice. One passed low enough that I could see its harness. Webbing covered its beak, reins reached to its crown, where a white-clothed city guard steered.
As the rider spotted us, the beast’s claws reached out for me, extending, ready to grab. A cracked tal
on marred its left foot.
Wik let out a yell and threw his knife hard. The blade struck just above the talon, in a tender spot. The bird shrieked—a noise that sounded like the sky was tearing—and wheeled away so suddenly, the rider nearly dislodged and fell to the ground. The bone eater screeched again and spun away. Its mate followed.
Dix ran, but I stood my ground with Wik, daring them to come back.
Varat’s citizens weren’t used to fighting. Meantime, fighting was nearly all we knew. When they were out of sight, we turned towards the city again.
Dix’s laughter trailed ahead of us like a lure. Then she yelled, “Watch out!”
I looked around wildly. “What?”
“Groundmouth,” Wik said. He pointed to our left, where an invisible turmoil stirred up the dirt, just out of range. That had been close. Dix watched from a hill nearby.
Groundmouths made my skin crackle with fear, but no more than the bone eaters. I breathed deep. “If you can’t point out danger clearly, and you can’t go away, stay quiet,” I muttered at Dix.
“I was nearly grabbed by one. You have no idea how frightening…” Dix trailed off. “Clouds. You made it across the desert. You have every idea.” She sounded truly remorseful. That was something.
We kept moving, this time with Dix trailing behind. Bone eaters no longer pursued us. It didn’t take us long to realize why. We’d crossed into the territory of a new city. This one was larger, judging by the deep tracks it had worn with its passage.
The tracks provided shade and shelter along the dusty route. The ground was packed so hard within the ruts, groundmouths couldn’t break through.
When we reached the end of the tracks, we discovered why this city had dragged such a deep passage. It was gravid. It had dug a hole in the ground, deeper than deep, to deposit its enormous eggs.
The three of us skidded to a halt before we fell into the hole, our dread and curiosity tugging at us.
“We could find another city. We don’t have time to linger here.” I tried to remember the locations of other cities from the map.
“No one in their right minds should disturb a city in that state,” Wik agreed. “But it’s too far to go around its head before nightfall.” A half day passed as the city rumbled and groaned while we tried to stay out of its way. When it carefully pushed dirt up over three glistening eggs and settled itself on top of them, we walked around the city’s side. There, worn ropes and pulleys hung from its flanks.
The city had settled and began to rumble, loudly. Its giant eyes slipped closed. Its towers, fairly thick and arranged in a long line down its back, outliers to either side stopped well short of the clouds.
“It would be tired after that.” Dix cackled.
“Hush,” Wik commanded. “We would rather it stayed that way.”
The ropes and ladders that descended from the city’s shoulders were old, ragged, and gray. The cams and pulleys were as complex as any wing.
What did these resemble? One of the brass plates featured pulleys. I pulled the plates from my satchel and located the right one. “Wik, look.” The etching of pulleys also showed other machines, with wheels and wings set sideways. I wondered if we’d find those on this city too.
“The pulleys look ancient,” Wik said.
“If this city’s abandoned, perhaps we can live on it?” I suggested, though I wasn’t sure how long a city might live atop a clutch of unhatched cities. “How long does a new city take to hatch?”
“Better question,” Wik said. “What will new cities do to their surroundings when they hatch?”
He made a good point. “What do you think we should do now?”
Wik stopped and looked up at the city. “That’s the first time you’ve ever asked me that question.” His shoulders shook with laughter until tears welled in his eyes.
“Well?” Frustrated, heat rising on my cheeks, I pressed him. “The ground is as baffling now as the sky is to a fledge on their first flight. More so.”
“Let’s look?” Wik wiped his eyes. “Just us.” He turned and eyed Dix, who had seated herself on the ground in the shade. “If she leaves now, she can’t bother the people on Varat. I’m fine with not helping her climb up, are you?”
I nodded. It would be a welcome relief not having Dix with us.
“Come back soon?” Dix called from below, almost plaintively. She began to hum an old song, “The Bone Forest.”
Dix’s tune pulled me like an errant wind into the past. I heard the desire to survive at any cost in each note. And I heard something else also. Hope. Making a song for the future to learn and sing was a hopeful act, no matter what.
Our songs would have to change, but that secret hope was part of who we were, all of us.
I began to hum, too.
22
NAT, MIDCLOUD
The first kites descended, the blackwings found fear
As morning rain pattered the cave mouth and blew spray into the cave, we prepared to let the first kite go.
I sat with Elna and held her hand. Her skin felt warm and soft as ash. She was well enough to be moved, but still feverish. “I’ll see you soon,” I whispered.
She smiled up at me. “You will. After you keep the people of this city safe.”
“And you’ll watch out for my family,” I told her.
My breath hitched seeing her tucked into the litter we’d made. I’d come so close to losing her, losing them all. “And you.” I pulled close Ceetcee and Beliak, encircling the baby sleeping slung at his chest. “Keep my mother safe. And yourselves.”
Then I kissed each of them, Elna twice on the forehead. I touched the baby’s scalp once more.
My knuckles white on the litter, I helped lift it to where the guards stood ready to fly.
The first group wouldn’t descend until after the rain ceased, but then their descent would be unstoppable. The pulleys had been set, the kite fully rigged.
“I’ll come back up, if I can,” Ciel said, leaning on her brother’s shoulder. She squeezed my fingers too.
Moc looked at her, dry-eyed. “You are the one that’s always leaving now,” he said. “I wish I was.”
Ciel’s mouth opened and shut like a baby bird. “You’re needed here more. You’re strong enough to work the pulleys.”
“I’m proud to do that for you.” Moc kicked the dirt of the cave with a silk-wrapped foot. “But next time, I’ll do the leaving.”
She smoothed his hair. “I know.”
I bowed to Ciel. “Risen. You have charge of my family now.” And my heart. And all my secrets. I tilted my chin in the direction of the towers where the pulleys had been set. “Stay as far from the city as you can. Be ready to run.”
“Put it in the song,” Ciel said. “Everyone deserves to know. Promise me that?”
I wrote down the lines on the bone tablet. “I promise. They’ll know as soon as you signal you’re safe on the ground.”
At the last minute, Ciel pressed a furled fern into Macal’s hand. It resembled the spiral symbol for “home,” or an old Spire mark. “When I stayed at Mondarath, after the Spire fell, I learned that Sidra loved green. Tell her we’ll see her soon.”
Macal nodded. “I’ll deliver it.”
Outside, the rain began again. Macal and I would lose our chance, especially if the weather worsened and we waited much longer. A brighter line of yellow among rolls of gray signaled a break in the rain line. If we left now, we might be able to fly with it for some time.
“Nat,” Macal said, using his voice like a winghook to lift me away from my family.
“I’m ready,” I said. But I was not. I’d never be ready.
I stepped back and watched my family and the guards bearing Elna disappear in the mist.
Macal and I checked each others’ wingstraps, tightening them for the long climb up the vents. I reviewed the map Aliati had shared with us, marking blackwing towers and free towers. She’d given Macal his knife back, too.
When we were ready, we
leapt from the cave mouth: me leading, Macal following.
We found a fast gust quickly. Aimed for the light-streaked break in the clouds.
The wind buffeted us as we tried to stay between rain lines. My hair and face grew damp with mist.
Above us were so many things I had missed. Blue sky and flying, bone-white towers and wind. The carvings and games and our history. The way we had raised ourselves up. The stars.
I whistled The Rise’s melody, and Macal whistled it back across the wind.
We would give all of this up again for the horizon.
“Ready?” Macal whistled now.
“In a generation, The Rise won’t have meaning.” With the weather all around us, I wasn’t sure Macal could hear me.
“Soon there will be new meaning to our songs. We’ll sing about descending, together, and living. We’ll sing Ciel’s songs instead.” Macal sounded so confident.
Finally, I turned for the ghost tower and Macal followed. When we landed, I pointed out the place where I’d watched a skymouth battle a bone eater, so long ago. “There was a cave, just there. You’d almost always see one.”
We rested for a long time, watching, but we saw no skymouths. Aliati was right; they’d gone. We couldn’t slow down. I’d been right to keep the wind a secret a little longer.
“We won’t be welcomed, you know,” I told Macal. “You’re flying with a Lawsbreaker.” It had been so long since I’d faced the city’s justice. So long since I’d given everything up to protect my family.
Macal nodded. “A Lawsbreaker and a councilor, working together. Whatever reception we get, we’ll make do. Let’s go.”
It was getting darker, but Macal could echo. That got us closer to the cloudtop.
After so long in the gray undercloud, would the sun dazzle my eyes in the open sky? Would the stars?
Would my family miss the light and the stars as much as I had?
As we slowly circled up, Macal caught me looking down. “They’ll be fine,” he called.
“I hope so.” They had to be.
Spotting a stronger draft, I angled my wings to ride it. Macal followed. We caught a strong vent circling up. That much wind, and me buoyed by it, was exhilarating.