by Fran Wilde
This time I was sure I saw it. “Did you see?” I pointed, just as a figure in a white shift appeared, ducking between spurs of bone. “There’s someone here.”
Wik, cautious as ever, said, “If there’s one, there may be more.”
There was a silence as we looked across the ridge, then headed for the figure. My leg cramped, and I stopped to knead the calf.
“I can’t go much faster,” I finally admitted.
“It’s all right,” Wik said. “Just give it time.”
We were running out of time. How could I give any? “The city needs us to find a home. A new one, because the one we found, the one with artifexes and healers, had already found Dix.”
Wik looked down over the city’s side, as if a bone eater might have carried Dix away. I looked too. “She was right, you know.”
Leaning unsettled my pack, and the strap slid across my shoulder. I heard a quiet squawk. Maalik poked his head from my cloak when we began walking again.
I held out a finger. He jumped on it and chirped at me. Then flew to my shoulder. “You could fly farther,” I lectured him. “Practice.” He nibbled my ear with his beak.
Dix had almost ended Maalik too.
As we drew closer to the bone ridge, I didn’t see anyone, but I heard a very regular sound, like an insect: kit-kit-kit. It was close by. I stepped towards the sound. “Right about what?”
He followed me, head turned to the left, as if he was listening too. “That we need to take some technology for our city. Especially if no one is here to use it.”
The ticking sound was louder now. Looking closely, I noticed the ridge was carved with intricate marks, rubbed black by time.
A white-garbed figure stood on the opposite side of a bone spur. Their face, covered with the mask, was familiar. Their gestures of “no” and “go!” were even more so.
We approached, and Wik caught the healer’s arm. “Stop.”
The healer held something. It pulsed against their robe: sharp beats, not the ka-thunk of a heart but that kit-kit-kit-kit sound, like a baby bird. Regular and hungry.
“What is this?” I reached for the object, and the healer pulled it away, then stepped backwards and almost fell on the uneven ridge. Wik caught their elbow. “Steady.”
The healer put the mechanism in the crook of their arm and touched a lever. The sound quieted. They fended off Wik with the other hand. Eyes fierce, twisting this way and that, they seemed determined to keep him off balance. At their feet, a piece of bone had been removed from the ridge. Another hole.
Moving down the ridge from Wik and the healer, I tapped on bone with my hook. One spot sounded different when I thunked it.
I pressed until the bone plate shifted and wobbled at the touch of my hook. When I bent my hands to it, it felt cool. Kneeling painfully, I twisted the bone plate away from the ridge and reached inside, to where my fingertips touched cold metal.
“Wik!” The thing pulsed against my fingers, just like the one in the healer’s hands. When I pulled, hinged leaves of brass and a silver metal all bound in birdgut emerged from the cache. The kit-kit-kit sounded louder than ever. To quiet the thing, I covered it with a cloth. But I could still feel it beating in my hands. “What is it?”
The healer made a sound and tried to maneuver around Wik to get to me.
The object looked like the map Dix had found on Varat.
Etchings marked its sides, much like the plates in our satchels and up in the midcloud cave. A long fiber cord tethered the thing to the hole where we’d found it, but that barely registered to me. The brass surround of the box had the same look as the plates tucked into the Singer’s bone codex from our own city, embedded in the walls of the towers.
Had we found the place where they’d been made?
The healer was speaking now, long low stretches of consonants. Gesturing for me to give them the mechanism.
I was too fascinated to comply. Somewhere, a long time ago, our brass plates had the same origin as these objects.
“There’s something else in here,” Wik said. He’d mimicked my actions and was lying awkwardly on his side, trying to reach for a bundle I could barely see. He tugged at it and pulled, grunting. “Yes. Here.” He held out the second wrapped item. It was an enormous basket, woven shut. It stank of guano and something sharper.
The healer began to tug at our robes, our sleeves. They’d put the mechanism down, eyes wide with alarm.
Wik set the basket on the ridge carefully. Looked from it to the mechanism in my hands, which was still making that kit-kit-kit sound, fast and regular. Then he opened the basket, and we saw bones. A body’s worth. We looked down the ridgeline and saw similar markings everywhere.
“Wik.” I felt the same chill I’d felt in the midcloud towers, when we discovered a cairn.
He drew a breath. “Put that down and run, Kirit. This city is a grave.”
The healer pointed over the city’s side and away.
I would not put down this treasure. If this city was abandoned, this mechanism was ours. It was our heritage. I yanked the tether free, saying, “If you don’t want to carry the basket, fine. I’m keeping this.”
The healer’s face went gray just as Wik yelled, “Kirit!”
Both of them grabbed the mechanism. Wik tore it from the healer’s hands and threw it as far as he could.
“Why did you do that?”
The healer’s words were short and sharp now. Furious sounds.
Wik, breathing hard, said, “It smelled like rot gas. But much stronger. Unstable. What if it exploded?”
“Why would someone put something like that on a city?” I grumbled at the loss, and at Wik’s reaction. I’d been hoping to show the mechanism to Djonn, if he made it down the towers in one piece.
Seeing Wik’s movements, the healer joined him in pulling me over the side of the city. The litany of syllables continued, the urgency unmistakable.
Wik gestured at me to keep descending. “The baskets of bones and the mechanisms. If there’s one, there are likely more. I don’t want to find out why. The healer doesn’t either. Do you?”
* * *
Climbing down a city’s side was easier without Dix on my back.
When we reached the ground, Dix caught up with us. Eyed the healer. “You found your pet again.”
“Hush.” Wik lifted Dix to his back. We walked fast for as long as we could in the heat, taking turns carrying the blackwing. The healer helped too, though their eyes narrowed to slits when they carried Dix.
“What’s your name?” Wik said to the healer. He touched his chest, then my shoulder. “Wik. Kirit.”
The healer paused for a moment, thinking, then said, “Liope.” They touched their own shoulder.
I tried the name on my tongue. Smiled, and the healer smiled back.
But Dix kept arguing. With all of us now. “We shouldn’t have left the artifact, Wik. Whatever we found, it might not have been dangerous.”
The soles of our feet burned. We slowed to drink what water we had. Dix looked back at the abandoned city, shaking her head.
“And that wasn’t a bad city,” she said.
“There was nothing alive on it that we could see,” Wik said. “That’s bad luck. Who knows what we’d find in the towers above.”
My hands smelled faintly of rot gas. Wik smelled like bones.
“Dead isn’t dangerous,” Dix said from the healer’s back. “Just unlucky.”
Wik began echoing, and I joined him, trying to sound out groundmouths.
Our collaborative clicking drew Liope’s attention. They dropped Dix and caught up to me. Stared, then tried clicking too.
“Wait,” Dix cried. “I can’t keep up.”
“You’ll have to,” Wik answered. He gestured to Liope. “They were helping. Varat was helping you.”
“Not all of them,” Dix grumbled. “Not the best things. The best things they kept for themselves.”
“Shhh, you two,” I said. “I can’t echo wi
th the noise.” Dix had even made a loud clatter when she’d landed on the ground.
“The mechanicals were theirs to keep or give as they chose!” Wik shouted. He’d grown angrier since the city had moved away on the plain, but now he faced Dix and loomed over her, furious. She stooped, like the thick air below didn’t suit her. Like the ground pained her feet more than anyone else’s. “You’re out of chances,” Wik finally said. “The next time you’re at risk and I have the choice, I will drop you.”
Dix nodded and managed to look remorseful. “You don’t want what else I found, then?” She opened her hand to show me the map and the lens that the curators had kept on a shelf. The artifacts glittered in the sun.
The healer cried out and grabbed at both. Dix pulled her hand back.
“No,” signed Liope over and over again. They pointed back the way we’d come, back towards the city we’d escaped.
“Dix, may you fall forever and a day.” Now I knew why the fliers from Varat chased us. This map was a treasure of theirs.
From the healer’s reaction, I worried they’d chase us again.
“They have plenty of these. They give these to children,” Dix said, shrugging. “No one told me not to take it.”
I scowled, but Liope pulled down their mask and yelled, one hand waving in the air, fingers splayed. I reached out to calm them, as they’d once done for me. They shook me off and glared at Dix.
“‘No one told you not to’ is a fledge excuse,” Wik said. “No more.” He bound her wrists and tied the other end of the tether to his waist. She trailed behind him, a foil in his wake, fighting the tether. Trying to reason with Wik.
“If we’d stayed, or kept their things, we’d be stronger now.” She spat dryly into the dirt. It barely lifted a tiny cloud, didn’t discolor anything. We were thirsty and hot, and now we were thieves many times over.
“We can’t return it. Unless Liope wants to go back?” Wik tried a gesture towards Varat, then pointed at the healer.
Very emphatically, the healer shook their head. Pointed at the three of us, then at Varat, and signed “no.”
Dix chuckled. “By helping us, this one’s exiled themselves.”
“That’s not funny, Dix.” We could barely understand the healer, but we were in their debt.
When Dix finally quieted, the kit-kit-kit-kit sound came again, barely audible.
“Wik, I thought you said those were dangerous.” I didn’t have a mechanism anymore, so I assumed he did.
“I don’t have any. They seemed dangerous,” Wik said.
“The healer.” I pointed to their pack. One of the mechanisms was tucked inside.
A small boom, like thunder in the distance, had me looking for rain. Instead an orange glow expanded into smoke, near where Wik had tossed the artifact.
Then, one by one, we heard more explosions go off, across the city’s back.
The giant groaned and roared. Tried to rise, and failed. Its towers, which were shorter than the previous city’s, and far smaller than ours, shook in the air. It struggled to rise again, pushing dirt with its feet, stepping on its own eggs. Earth pulled up with its belly, exposing the remaining clutch to the heat. The soft surfaces grew cloudy and collapsed.
“That city was dangerous enough that someone wanted to destroy it,” Wik finally said, staring at Liope, and the mechanism they held.
Wik and I both grabbed for it. Liope pulled the mechanism away, making a “no” sign again and finally showing us a cord, still in place, and a switch that kept the mechanism from charging.
Dix cackled quietly. “Now what are you going to do with your pet, Kirit? Your perilous pet.”
I didn’t know. The healer seemed too dangerous to leave behind.
Just like Dix.
And yet, Liope had saved our lives. And we’d ruined theirs, cut them off from their people.
Wik stared west, where another city had begun moving closer. We felt it through our feet first, a city Varat’s size, headed for the immobilized city, bone eaters flying out ahead, leading it.
The healer motioned with a free hand, making a similar pattern to the one Wik had made before the Varat officials.
The injured city tried to rise to defend itself. The shadow of its towers passed overhead and we hurried to get out of the way.
One less place for our people to shelter. The ground was hostile, and we had nowhere to go. The desert once again stretched before us. After working our way over a small hill, we found a small pond and quenched our thirst.
“We can’t leave them both out here,” Wik said. “Though I worry less about Liope than I do about Dix.”
I wasn’t so sure. “We must leave the device here.”
Wik rose and approached the healer. They tucked the device in their pack. Growled when Wik reached for it. Gestured at us, then back at the city. Then stood and began to walk away.
“Wait.” I ran after them. If my leg grew worse, I would need the healer’s help. “You can stay.” I made a gesture I hoped was conciliatory. Reached for the mechanism again. They shook their head.
“Get it back while they’re sleeping,” Dix said. “It could be useful. I can help.”
“You’ll stay far from that bag, Dix,” Wik said. He began walking, and Liope and Dix followed. After a moment, I joined them.
* * *
We rested in the shade of a tall silver-leaf plant, Wik and I keeping watch in shifts. On his watch, Wik captured two ground rats. Lacking fuel, we ate them raw.
The healer never left their pack unattended. They slept with their head nested on it.
Now and then, we continued to learn each other’s words by pointing at objects and repeating sounds. Sounds were beginning to feel familiar, and though our languages had been split for too long, we were beginning to reach some understandings.
At night, the groundmouth particles glowed in Wik’s hair and behind his ears whenever he or I echoed. Liope pointed and murmured about them, making a spiral sign by their ear. Reaching out to touch our tattoos, and the scars on my face from the skymouth skin.
Dix walked alone, lost in her thoughts, still tethered. We let her take lead while Wik tried to brush off the glow, mostly successfully.
Later, when I looked behind his ears, and in his hair in the daytime, I couldn’t see anything. “A trick of the light. Or you needed to bathe.” Thinking back to the first time he’d killed the groundmouth, and the reaction of the Varat officials, I wondered. The blue marks on their skin had been the same color as the groundmouth’s spray.
Our silver tattoos were from skymouth ink. Were groundmouths similar? Possibly related? I reached for any commonalities between my former world and this one.
We kept walking, our feet aching. When I stopped to rest my injured leg, Liope murmured over it, but waved me on.
After what seemed like days and nights of little progress under the cloud, the outline of our own city grew clear on the horizon. We had failed in our search.
“What will we tell them?” Wik asked. I hadn’t heard him sound so lost, ever.
“Tell them about Varat,” Dix said, from my back. She dug her fingers into my shoulders. “Tell them there is a city of wonders that does not know how to fight.”
I put Dix down, hard, on the ground. “No.” Thinking of the trained bone eaters: “They do know how to fight. It’s just that they fight cities, not people.”
She looked up at me, angry. “You will kill everyone then, by doing nothing.” Dix waved her uninjured hand. “No city is innocent. And we need to survive. Just ask your healer.”
I wouldn’t give up. But I couldn’t go back empty-handed. I looked long and hard at our city, its tilted spires combing the cloud.
Someone had to keep Dix, and Liope with that ticking artifact, as far as possible from the dying city.
That person should be me.
A thin breeze teased at me as night fell, this time coming from the direction of the ridgeline, still so far away. I thought I saw smoke columns outli
ned by the first stars.
Over the past half day, I’d started limping again. The drop from Varat had been a long one, even with the help of the ladders. The scramble off the city of graves had jarred my leg badly. The healer had been walking closer to me, helping. I let them. But I didn’t tell Wik that, and I hoped he hadn’t seen.
Still, someone needed to return.
I stopped in my tracks on a moonlit hilltop, and the others stopped with me. I put my hand on Wik’s chest and looked at him. “You said you wouldn’t leave.”
He nodded. “I won’t.”
“And I promise,” I said, memorizing his eyes, his face, “I’ll find you.”
He breathed hard through his nose. “You’re leaving. Me. Now.” His hand covered mine, then tightened. I slipped from his grasp.
“One of us has to tell the city to set up shelter, that there’s no other home yet. One of us has to warn them about the groundmouths and the cities. One of us has to keep looking and to keep these two away from our people. I’ll go with them to the ridge we saw on the map.”
Wik had been so strong and righteous when we’d met. A Singer, gray robed, determined. And I’d been positive I’d known what I wanted too. That surely hadn’t included a Singer.
Now we stood together, looking out over the desert and the cities.
Dix and Liope ignored us, or pretended to.
Wik waited until I reached out again and pulled him close. “I don’t have to go back,” he said. “You don’t have to keep going.”
“You can get back to the city faster without all of us.” I rested my head on his chest. His heart beat strong and steady. I leaned back, taking in the way his cheeks had weathered in the sun and heat, the deep shadows beneath his green eyes, and I stood high on my toes and kissed him in front of the others. It wasn’t our first kiss. Not by far. But it was a long good-bye kiss, meant to last a whole walk.
He bent closer and kissed me back. Arms wrapped tight around me. We stood that way until the sun came up.
When he began walking towards our city, he didn’t look back.