Horizon

by Fran Wilde

  “Littlemouths!” I couldn’t contain my joy at seeing them, despite my confusion over everything else.

  Their effect on Liope was more gradual. At first, they avoided the glow. Then we had to take turns nursing Djonn because the healer refused to leave the space where the littlemouths rested.

  Then we heard Liope humming, trying to follow Ciel’s tune.

  “Are all the other city’s residents like this?” Ciel asked.

  I shook my head. “They’re all different, I think. Just like us.” Though this one was particularly unfathomable, even after our time together. “We would need to work hard to understand each other. I hope we can someday.”

  When Liope returned to their attention to Djonn, they had a faraway look in their eyes. Their gaze kept drifting back to the littlemouths. Once, they spoke a word and touched my tattoos, then gestured at the glow.

  I’d forgotten, in the long time away, that my scarred skin would sometimes pulse with the littlemouths. I could see the glow on Liope’s fingertips. The intent look in their eyes.

  Once again, I wished we could understand more than a few gestures. Liope touched the back of their neck, where their blue tattoo was.

  We weren’t alone. We were similar. But not similar enough.

  Shaking her head at the healer, Dix had disappeared into the depths of the caves, muttering, “Spy.”

  “There’s a thing you should know,” I said to my five friends in the kite. I told them about Dix, our journey across the desert, and her words the night before.

  Moc growled, “I will never forgive her.”

  “It sounds like she doesn’t want you to,” Ciel said. “And she’s Kirit’s find. Kirit scavenged her. She gets to decide what happens to Dix.”

  Raq’s mouth quirked into a smile. “You’ll make a good scavenger,” she said, clapping Ciel on the shoulder. Aliati leaned in, chin over Raq’s shoulder, admiring the littlemouths. “She already is, it looks like.”

  “What we have to decide,” I said, “is what we do now. There aren’t enough of us here with the two kites to defend against an attack, but Dix doesn’t think the other cities will come to the ridge.”

  “I don’t care what Dix thinks,” Moc muttered.

  “The right information can sometimes come from the wrong source,” Aliati said. She frowned. “Just depends what we do with it from there.”

  “Rya’s going to force the city to stay where it is. She’s going to try to defend the new city, make a go of things there,” Moc continued. “She thinks we’re just fledges, so she talked over us. Over Urie. Over Ciel. We heard everything.”

  That had been a failing with Doran too. “Nobody is ‘just’ anything,” I said. I remembered something Ezarit had said to me long ago. “Don’t let anyone tell you who you are.”

  The littlemouths’ glow dimmed as Ciel stopped singing. “Can we begin again? Here?” The breeze came in over the kite and teased her brass curls. Liope stared at where the glow had been.

  A city might not attack the ridge. One might attack our once-home, though. From what Ciel had said, below those bones, a new city was readying to hatch. And Nat and Rya seemed in no hurry to move away.

  Should I send Maalik now? Would they pay attention?

  It was tempting to stay here. To leave the other city behind. To start fresh and let the disaster on the horizon be someone else’s problem. I knew people who would be happy to do that. Who’d fought hard enough that they deserved to do that.

  But that wasn’t who I was.

  With Djonn still ill, though improving, the solutions I needed would be harder to find. I hoped Ciel had been paying attention to the artifexes.

  “I need to go back,” I said. “And I need your help to do it.”

  In the dim light, I began to explain my plan.

  36

  NAT, BELOW

  Before Brokenwings takes a leap too far

  Singing Remembrances was a sad but welcome break from living in the shadow of the fallen city and fear of what was to come. People streamed from their shelters, and we walked with them to where we’d say our good-byes.

  Rya led us to a site near the anchored kites. She’d chosen a ceremony location as far upwind as possible.

  We were still too close to the stench, if anyone asked me. But Rya hadn’t asked.

  She allowed me to walk through the shelters without guards trailing. “You don’t cause as much trouble on the ground,” she’d said.

  I’d done my best to reassure her this was true. I’d promised to sing Remembrances. And if someone called me Liar today, even Rya, I would try not to challenge them.

  Better, I would help Rya test the launcher Ceetcee had built. A first step towards flight, we hoped. To do so, I carried a medium-sized ballast sack, filled with scraps. It weighed a bit more than a fledge.

  So much could weaken the community as it began to heal from the fall and prepare for the future. We needed strong leaders to help. Macal was gone. Sidra still mourning. And I’d promised myself to Rya.

  The day before, a blackwing had been dragged right into the ground. Rya had sent four guards out to investigate, and two had come back. “There are creatures like skymouths in the ground,” Wik had explained to Rya, to the council. Councilors from Amrath and Bissel had scrambled to reassure people that these groundmouths were not a sign of worse to come, but without Macal to guide them, panic had bloomed.

  “I hope the ceremony and the launcher test will help give them hope,” Rya murmured.

  As we walked, they called out to her. “What next? How much more bad luck?”

  I cast an uneasy glance at the horizon. The approaching city had moved closer overnight. Its bone eaters were a black cloud above it, but it still had a large distance to cross. Rya’s guards had begun gathering weapons, but she had not yet told the citizens.

  Still, Rya kept walking as she answered their questions. “We will face whatever is next together.” Only I was close enough to see the pulse of tension at her throat.

  At least for now, citizens fell into step behind her. They trailed their worries behind them, their losses.

  At the site Rya had picked for Remembrances and the launcher demonstration, a crowd of blackwings and a few Aivans waited for us, Urie among them.

  “When will we fly, Rya?” he asked.

  While Rya had transformed herself for the day by adding a mix of feathers to her robes, from bone eater top feathers, to smaller gryphon pinion feathers, Urie had stripped his few feathers away.

  “We must fly again,” Urie said to those who would listen. “For the good of the city. We can’t fight or flee danger when we aren’t on the wing. We can’t defend ourselves.” Citizens pressed close, listening.

  Minlin, one of Macal’s guards from Mondarath who had been seen recently with the blackwings, pointed to the horizon. “Another city is coming. We have to fly now.”

  The crowd began to murmur, Remembrances almost forgotten.

  Urie had wanted so much to be important. Had loved working with the artifexes in the meadow. Rya had given him small tasks. Minlin too.

  “We will fly!” Rya said. “And soon.”

  She was still learning to be a leader on the ground. Meantime the blackwings were growing stronger again. At exactly the wrong time.

  Minlin continued to speak. “You’ve built a mechanism to launch fliers. You’ve been working on it for days. Let’s use it, before the other city gets too close. Put us back in the air.”

  Rya nodded and gestured to the sack I carried, and the launcher at the other side of the site. “The launcher has not been a secret. We’ll test it after Remembrances. When we know it works, we’ll move forward. You must be patient.”

  “It is time to try it now. To reclaim the sky,” Urie said.

  Now Rya stepped up, balancing on a large piece of bone. She raised her hands, and her feathered robe swung, as if in a breeze. She spoke to everyone, not just Urie and Minlin. “This is a beginning. Not an end. A time to remember an
d move forward. Then we will regain the skies.”

  The blackwings, led this time by Minlin, began to chant, “Fly. Fly. Fly.”

  Rya’s face fell.

  Minlin shouted, “We need to do something, Rya. Another city is coming. We have no defense.” The crowd joined her.

  Beliak, on the edge of the crowd, shouted louder, “We have defenses. All of us, together. Look what we’ve survived. Let’s remember our dead now, and heal the living. Then we’ll test this launcher in a way that doesn’t reduce our numbers further. Then we can deal with the approaching city. We have the time. Let’s use it.”

  Beliak always spoke his mind. Amidst my fears, I felt so much pride that he was not afraid to disagree. With anyone.

  The crowd quieted, and Rya nodded her thanks to him. She was younger than Kirit; still, her stubborn expression reminded me of my lost wingmate. She could lead, if she could keep control of the blackwings. But this small rebellion would hurt her as much as the groundmouths had.

  “We will fly again,” she said. “But first we must learn how to live here and fight here. Together. To defend what’s been entrusted to us by our city.” She looked behind her. “To earn the future.”

  “What holds us back,” the Varu councilor countered from below, “is lack of action. We cannot fly if we don’t take risks. Don’t you trust the work Ceetcee and Beliak have been doing?”

  Rya stared at him. “You would also press us forward too fast, risking our own people? Is this what Macal would have done?”

  “Urie, Minlin. Councilor Varu. Macal trusted you,” Sidra added. “I trusted you. Why do you do this now?”

  Urie turned on Rya. “You said we could be like birds, escape the towers. We fell. You said we could become strong, but we live in the mud. We can fly away, or to the attack. Do you not want to try, now?”

  They were afraid. They wanted strength. Fearlessness.

  Rya weighed her options. “I want us to fly on our own again. Perhaps very soon. But only after carefully testing the mechanism.”

  The crowd made restless noises. Minlin stepped forward. “There isn’t enough time to be careful.”

  Rya stepped from the bone platform and stood nose to nose with Minlin. “Are you offering to fly?”

  The crowd quieted, waiting with a bone eater’s focus to see what would be left for its meal. Sidra retreated through the crowd. I moved to follow her, but Rya’s guard put a hand to my chest.

  An Aivan brought Minlin a pair of wings. She turned to the climber, braced atop a broken bone tower, rising two tiers above the mud. Her face looked more uncertain now.

  She’d meant to pressure Rya, not risk herself. Urie, too, looked away.

  Rya’s challenge had quelled them. But the crowd grew noisier.

  Someone shouted, “Not Minlin!” Another, “Take the Liar instead!”

  Rya glanced at me. The crowd was turning on her, on us.

  They will tear you apart.

  The sun sank below the cloudline. The ground steamed, and heat rippled the horizon.

  Rya tried to calm them. “We’ll need more bravery if we’re going to keep other cities at bay,” she said. “I see now that we must move forward faster. But I do not think this is the right time, unless you would sing Remembrances for one more.”

  The crowd disagreed. “Fly,” Urie shouted. “Fly!” the crowd responded with one voice. Minlin grasped the wings the Aivans held out.

  If Minlin failed, after Rya’s challenge, the crowd would blame Rya. We could lose more leaders in the process. But Rya didn’t see the risk. And neither did Minlin or the blackwings.

  While everyone focused on Minlin, I dropped the sack I carried and stepped behind the climber’s base. Djonn had been working on spring tension for the legs, back in the meadow. I found the catch that held it. With a quick motion, I released the spring tension on the throwing arm. When Minlin gave the signal to launch, the mechanism didn’t move.

  A blackwing saw me and guessed what I’d done. “Liar! What gives you the right to interfere?”

  A soft rain began to patter on the ground, making dark spots in the red dust, drawing wet lines on my skin and caking mud in the creases between my fingers and in my hair. The air smelled cleaner, even as everything below the air got messier.

  There was no good way forward. The people would not follow me. And if Minlin failed, they wouldn’t follow Rya either. And Minlin was not ready to lead.

  “I have the right,” I said. “As much as anyone.”

  The restless crowd slipped and skidded on the softened ground, their footwraps growing heavy and slick with water.

  Liar.

  I heard it before the first handful of mud hit me. A blackwing and her mate, both smiling and laughing. The mud slid down my arm as they turned back to Urie and Minlin. A child caught the game. I heard a badly thrown handful land behind me, striking the launcher, and Minlin.

  “Liar!”

  “And your family too!”

  * * *

  They might just tear me apart, as Rya had warned. But the community had to stay together.

  On the horizon, I thought I saw a flicker of bright wings. Not the dark feathers of bone eaters who flew circuits around the cities, but brighter things by far. And then they were gone, a mirage.

  Once, I’d thought nothing could be worse than falling through the clouds. Once, I’d preferred the ground to falling.

  Now, before the gathered crowd, in front of shelters made of discarded wings, a dead city at my back, I knew there was something worse than falling.

  Failing.

  The blackwings gathered with Urie and Minlin at their center. Rya’s Aivans were arrayed around her. A struggle seemed imminent. All that Macal and I had tried to do by bringing the community safely to the ground threatened to unravel.

  “I’ll test the mechanism instead, Rya,” I said. “There is nothing wrong with it, nor with the artifex who worked on it.”

  Before I could rethink, I climbed to where Minlin had stood moments before.

  The crowd whispered. But Ceetcee shouted, “You cannot do this! You are needed here!” She turned from me to Rya. “Do not let him do this!”

  Pitching my voice louder, I added, “I was less than truthful about what we would face on the ground. Some of it”—I gestured towards where the city’s egg lay—“I didn’t know. But I did know there wasn’t enough wind to fly on the ground. I should have told you.” I turned to Rya. “I made a promise.”

  Rya, a ruff of feathers at the neck of her cloak, her eyes outlined with crushed blacking, nodded acknowledgment of Ceetcee’s words. She turned to me. “Do you do this as my Lawsbreaker? You could die.”

  The crowd quieted. Rya held their attention again.

  I had no wish to die. But this was my chance to redeem myself. To keep Ceetcee safe, and Beliak too. To turn the blackwings’ defiance into a way forward, for all of us. I nodded. “I do this.”

  Minlin tried to give me her wings. “I’ll use my own,” I said. I whispered to Wik, who left the group at a run.

  “Haven’t enough people died already?” Beliak said. He held the baby so I could see her.

  “When will you name her?” I asked, trying to distract them. To remind the community what we fought for.

  It was the one question to which I desperately wanted to know the answer.

  “You won’t be around to see it!” Ceetcee said, angry. “Why ask?”

  “The flight might go well,” I countered. I wanted to be around. I needed to do something for the city.

  “Staying on the ground will go better,” Beliak said.

  Falling was my greatest fear. I’d fallen on my wingtest, in the Spire, through the clouds. Macal had seen me fall, had caught me. His dream for community had to be earned. Beliak had been right. Now I could pay Macal back.

  “You will have no time to recover from a dive,” Rya said. “One mistake, and you’ll be dashed to the ground.”

  “I understand.” I thought of Maalik, tryi
ng to fly, then tumbling to the ground. My mouth went dry. I thought of my father, risking his life to save the city.

  “Adjust the throwing arm to Nat’s weight,” Rya said.

  Ceetcee stood firm. “I refuse.”

  “Someone else will, then,” Rya said.

  Ceetcee capitulated. Changed the counterweights on the articulated bone leg, even as she tried to coax me to change my mind. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “You take too much responsibility. We need you. Not a hero of the city.”

  I checked my wings, tears prickling my eyes. This was a way to end the debate. To get us moving forward. Beliak stood still as bone, watching. Letting the baby suck on his finger.

  “Maybe we need heroes too,” I said. “We can best defend the city with flight. Rya is correct. I took flying from you. I want to give it back. Varat, according to Wik, is tall and mobile. It’s coming here, there is no doubt. But if we can fly, we have an advantage, we can turn their attack. We can keep the egg safe. Keep us safe.”

  Beliak broke his silence as Ceetcee threw up her hands, furious. “Someone else can do this. Why does it have to be you?”

  I pointed at the horizon, far from where I thought I’d seen wings earlier. More bone eaters, circling, in formation near the city on the horizon. Clearly visible now. Moving faster. “Because we are out of time.”

  The previous battle with Nimru was still so fresh that I imagined I could smell Varat approaching, feel its footsteps reverberating beneath my feet. Soon, we would.

  I was a hunter, a defender of my city, my family. Still the memory made me want to run. Instead, I stood fast in front of the launcher, while Rya helped Minlin down.

  Wik returned, my wings in his hands. He’d attached small sacks of lighter-than-air as well as ballast—in the form of bone chips—to the wings. “Coming down may be harder. You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.” I’d seen Djonn testing something like this at the midcloud, but he’d opted for the bigger kites. With the launcher, it could work. I climbed in. That’s when Ceetcee began yelling at me in earnest. Wik pulled her and Beliak back from the launcher.

  Up in the launcher, I could almost feel the wind.