by Fran Wilde
As we rose, Wik called to different tiers, asking after the injured, shouting instructions. Singers waited by the galleries, making ready to fly up after us, but waiting so as not to foul our wind. More flew from the holes in the walls, searching for cracks and signs the Spire was about to collapse. The first of these, a woman Wik’s age, with a bruise ripening on her cheekbone, reported back as we reached the top of the Spire.
“It’s lacework out there, all open to the city,” she said. “But the breaks are evenly spaced. The tower seems to be holding, at least for now.”
“Find weapons,” Wik instructed her as he set me down. She descended a ladder and ran down the passageway below, following his orders.
“This is what Terrin feared would happen. That the skymouths would escape,” Viridi said. Her silver-streaked hair was dusted with bone shards. Her voice cracked. She held Ciel’s hand tightly. “We were wrong to pen them, to breed them.”
Another Singer interjected, “We’ll need weapons if the towers attack.”
I flexed my arms and bounced on the balls of my feet, trying to work some feeling back into my legs. “The towers attacking? That’s what you’re worried about right now?” My voice was rough as scourweed.
The Singer turned to look at me. Who was I to speak?
Wik said, “Listen to her.”
“She’s won the right to speak,” Viridi agreed, silencing any doubts.
“Skymouths are loose in the city.” My doing, in large part. I knew this. I would make it right.
Macal ran up to us. “The Spire may stand, but everyone knows its secrets now.” He gripped my shoulder in thanks. I winced, then spoke again.
“So now the city knows. And now the city suffers. We are still Singers,” I said. “We must do our duty. We must catch the skymouths.”
We would be stronger working together. No more separation between tower and Spire. I spotted Beliak on the council tier, helping clear large pieces of bone. “Tell the nearest towers to spread the word. Skymouths are loose.”
Beliak yanked at the Bissel trader’s robe and they climbed onto the roof of the Spire, unfurling their wings as they went.
I turned back to Viridi. “My mother.”
“She is safe. Lurai and the traders pulled her from the enclosure when the Spire began to crack. They’ve taken her to Varu, to let her rest.”
A shout from the Gyre. Singers climbed the pulley ropes laden with weapons. More gathered on lower tiers. They waited for instructions, ready to fly.
What if they would not follow me?
“What you did…,” Wik whispered.
“They’ll sing of it,” Viridi finished for him.
“Not yet,” I said. “Not unless—not until—the skymouths are caught.”
Beliak returned. “Varu is sending as many people as it can to warn the nearby towers, and the traders are flying to the city’s edges. Guards and hunters are ready to fight.”
“We have to work together.” I turned to Wik and Macal. “All of us.” They would follow the three of us, united in purpose. Spire, tower, and me—who was both at once.
With a worried look, Wik ran his hand through the air near my cheek, where ugly welts had replaced the rashes raised by skymouth oils. They no longer burned, but I could feel the passage of air across them, and it made me shiver. I steadied myself as his green eyes met mine and then looked to the horizon, which had emptied of birds.
Sacrifice. Duty. This was what we shared.
From around the city, we began to hear the klaxons. Bone horns sounded warnings, at first from Varu and the towers near the Spire, but soon rippling out. So many.
“We must fix this,” I said.
Wik shouted over the edge of the balcony, to the Singers and older novices assembled below. “We will catch the skymouths. Save the citizens first. Worry about the Spire later.”
* * *
At Wik’s words, the Spire’s chaos was replaced by years of training. Singers grabbed weapons and found their fighting groups. I returned Wik’s knife and found several of my own, along with a bow and a quiver of arrows. Beliak lifted a set of drugged spidersilk nets.
“Eat,” Ciel said, holding out a fistful of dried goose meat, a sack of water in her other hand. When I took some, she circled the tier, making sure Singers drank and ate before they flew.
I chewed, exhausted. The food gave me strength, for now. “We need more fighters, more guards.” I grabbed Macal’s sleeve. “Get the whipperlings.”
To my surprise, he ran to do what I’d said. The Spire’s whipperlings were dispatched with hastily carved message chips. Anyone who saw them could read the danger, the need to fight together.
Viridi found me another new pair of wings, Rumul’s own spare set. They were big on me, but tightened fine to my shoulders.
Wik strode past, on his way to assemble his own flight of fighters. Hunters had begun to land on the roof. I caught up with him.
“We have to warn Elna and Tobiat and Nat. Lith isn’t safe.”
He frowned. “I’ll make sure they know.”
Around me, Singers snapped into action as they’d been trained to do, protecting the city at a moment’s notice.
Soon fliers flew formation from the top of the Spire. We heard horns blowing farther away. In the distance, on Amrath and Ginth, I saw Allsuns banners and gardens being hastily pulled in. Atop many towers, guards’ glass-edged wings sparkled in the sunlight as they massed for a fight.
The Singers rose to join them as the sun climbed high into the sky.
It was Allsuns. The day when towers remembered their fallen. Looked up in their honor.
But this year, the traditional Remembrance songs would have to wait.
Flight teams joined, not tower by tower, but as groups. Singers and traders, Varu and Naza, Grigrit and Viit. Mondarath guards flew with Amrath councilwomen.
We flew, and the city flew. Wings of all colors, gray and yellow, bright-dyed and faded. Flew to fight, to protect, all of us, together.
I leapt from the Spire. Five Singers, three able older novices, and two council elders followed me. We were joined by two hunters and a trader from the south.
“Flew with your mother once. Hope you’re as good as she is,” the trader said grimly. She locked her wings for fighting.
We spread out in a chevron pattern, sweeping around Varu, then southwest, searching for monsters.
From the closest towers came whoops as the hunter-Singer teams netted the first skymouths. Then a scream, hastily cut off.
We found our first skymouth tangling with Ginth’s guards. They circled a turbulent space in the air, just out of reach of its arms.
One of my hunters, armed with a bone spear and a set of nets, began to climb, his spear at the ready.
“Go with him,” I shouted to the councilors. I took the novices and the second hunter and circled to reinforce the guards.
The hunter could not see where to aim his spear. I looked at the guards. They circled, guessing where to fire their arrows. We’d wind up shooting each other this way.
“Use your nets,” I yelled.
Soon, the skymouth was trapped in a confusion of spidersilk and fiber nets. It yanked at its traces until I hummed it calm.
“What do we do with it now?” a novice asked.
What indeed. Taking them back to the Spire and tying them down would only repeat the problem. I circled the group once, thinking. The hunter with the bone hook yelled, “It’s getting loose!” and threw his spear. The net stopped jerking.
My heart broke. This was not right. None of it was. “Make sure it is dead, then leave it on Ginth, with a guard.”
The sun stayed high, and the net, as they tied it to Ginth’s rooftop bone cleats, glistened pink and damp. As the long day stretched on, I realized that the hunters and guards who fought with us were in danger. It was not night, but they still flew blind.
A shadow passed overhead, then Wik circled to position on my left pinion.
I smiled
at him, then heard another flier on my right. From beneath a borrowed pair of nightwings, Nat grimaced, pale and determined.
“Elna and Tobiat are safe,” he said in response to my startled look.
“Nat, you can’t fly now!”
“Everything’s braced and bandaged,” he said. “Once I got up in the air, I was fine. The challenge will be landing.”
I shook my head, angering him.
“I’m a hunter, Kirit. I have to fight.” He set his wings and nocked an arrow to his bow with a wince. “Besides,” he added sadly, “someone needs to help you clean up this mess.”
The two flew on either side of me, Singer and Lawsbreaker, my future and my past. One in Singer gray, one in black silk: Allsuns and Allmoons.
They flew as if they were my escorts. I did not want to be elevated like that. Like Rumul had raised himself above his peers. Above reproach. I set my jaw, stubborn. It was a protection I would not—could not—allow. We all fought as equals.
“Fine. We will each lead a flight. We need fliers who can see skymouths with each group.” I scanned the flight following Wik. He saw what I intended. Signaled a skilled Nightwing to team with Nat. I heard the Nightwing begin to echo as Nat and his Singer eyes peeled away from us.
“Wik, find Ceetcee and Beliak. Help them. Tell the Singers you see to team up with tower fighters.”
As we flew away from Ginth towards the west, we crossed another group flying in dove formation.
“We’ve bagged three,” their leader shouted. Aliati. She smiled ear to ear, buoyed by their success. The Singer at her side whooped as they turned and headed east.
Across the city, more emerged to fight than hide as the word spread through the towers. The traders, including Ezarit, made sure word spread faster than the skymouths.
I rearranged flights as I saw them so that each group had Singers who could echo.
We continued to hunt the air around the farthest towers for escaped skymouths large and small. Netted as many as we could. This was not the skymouths’ fault. This was what they were bred to do. We would capture them now, then figure out, as a city, together, what could be done.
When we left the Spire, the sun was high. Now we flew through the long day into dusk, seeking out the invisible.
In each tower, children and the old had been sequestered behind shutters and huddled close to the tower cores. Rooftops bristled with guards and volunteers. Bone horns sounded alarms.
“This is what the Rise must have been like,” said a Singer novice, flying by my wing for the moment.
No, this is nothing like the Rise. “This time, we all work together.”
I called for the flight to shift formation.
My flight assembled around me, wings to my left and right, bristling. The glass edges of the guards’ wings glittered.
“On your wings, Singer,” a hunter called. I looked around. She meant me.
I was the eye of my flight group. I shook myself awake and resumed echoing. Around us was open sky, then a curve of a tower. Below, fresh horror. A medium-sized skymouth, twice as large as my wings, crept towards the tower, its path confused. It zigged and zagged, not attacking, not yet.
“Net!” I said, signaling to those nearest. A big net of drugged spidersilk rustled as the novices unfurled it behind me. I did not take my focus off the skymouth. It moved below us, drunk with freedom, towards the tower.
We circled until the skymouth was directly beneath us and dropped the net. The monster fought, but the novices finally cinched the ties shut and secured it to the tower. I doubled back to make sure there were no more following this one.
From above, Beliak whistled, then dove to fly at my wingtip. Wik was behind him. “Finding fewer of them now, Kirit. Still some out there, but they’re hiding. Now what?”
I looked out across the city, hearing its towers as much as I saw them. “We have to stay vigilant, but we should start to rest in shifts. Fixing this will take time. Find places for the Singers to bunk on the towers for now.” My voice sounded tired.
“What about the skymouths?” Wik asked.
I closed my eyes for a second. “We’re not taking them back to the Spire.”
He agreed. “And we can’t free them. They’re too dangerous.”
The thought of more killing, even skymouths, made me lose my way for a moment. I tried to think. What would Ezarit do? What would Naton do? Ezarit might find a way to use the skymouths, to keep them for their sinew. Naton might build something to help hold them, away from the occupied towers. They’d trade bad for good.
But many of these skymouths were bred for killing. Even drugged in nets, they were still dangerous. One of my fighters had lost a toe, bitten off after he flew too close to a net.
My fliers grew tired. My own arms and legs ached, my mouth was dry with thirst. Fearing we would make mistakes if we grew too tired, I looked for a tower that did not yet have a flight or two of fighters already resting on its roof.
“I’ll scout for a tower that can host us,” Wik said. He found a breeze that took him southwest and slowly faded into the distance.
* * *
As I watched him go, I realized the rash on my hands from the skymouth’s hide had faded, along with the skymouth’s scent. The caustic oil had finally dried and peeled away. As I flew an updraft, my exposed skin pulsed in scrawls and etchings along the lines where I’d seamed the hides.
In the distance, Nat’s dark wings and those of the Singer flying with him led a line of hunters returning, seeking a place to land. I sighed with relief.
Then the sky opened below us. An enormous mouth, readying to swallow us whole.
The monster of the pens. The one that had devoured Sellis. It had tracked us through the night, hiding and waiting. Now it was upon us.
“Scream, Kirit!” yelled Beliak. “Shout it down!”
I tried. A sour sound, almost a bark, came from my throat. My voice was ruined. I had screamed too long in the Spire just this morning.
So I gripped my knife and dove instead. Angled to meet the thing sideways, its teeth as big as my hands; its eye, oiled and deep like the sky.
No chance this monster would stop, once it got through us. Not until the whole city was stripped bare and ruined.
I dove, my glass-tooth blade aimed straight at its giant eye.
I flew close enough that I could smell it: that acrid scent combined with smoke and blood. I tried to hum, to calm it, but the monster rolled its eye, flipped over backwards and fled, jettisoning behind it an acrid cloud that made breathing near impossible.
I choked on the cloud, wobbling on my wings.
“Kirit, where are you?” Beliak called as Nat’s flight crossed the skymouth’s path. I shouted a warning and tried to right myself.
Nat heard me. He whistled a turn. The Singer in his group signaled wildly and tried to order him back into line.
No! I was upright again, and climbing for them before I knew it. This time, I felt the scream in the back of my mouth, and I hoped that I was strong enough. Loud enough. Horrible enough.
The maw opened. I put myself between it and Nat.
The skymouth grunted and lashed tentacles in all directions. It scrawled motion in a sea of wings, tearing down one flier after another. In the midst of a pass, I jerked to a stop. The skymouth gripped me around the waist with a tentacle and pulled me in towards the rows of teeth. My rough scream had no impact on its intent. My voice faded in my mouth. The monster began to squeeze.
Behind me, Nat held his shot and yelled my name.
The skymouth now loomed as wide as a tower, as angry as the clouds. It shrieked and grabbed even as it drew me in. The fliers dove to stay clear of it, while still trying to make it release me. Arrows studded the invisible giant, but they served only to make it angrier.
The bone battens of my wings began to crack in its grip.
And then I heard a squeal, too high-pitched to be Singer or skymouth. The sleeve of my robe squirmed, then deflated. The littlemou
th. I echoed, trying to see it, though I didn’t know if I could in all the noise and confusion.
Yes, barely.
The tiny mouth pulled itself along the tentacle of the monster, a soft moving shape against the harder arm. It cheeped and squeaked, sharp-pitched and noisy, like nothing I’d ever heard. When it reached the maw, moments before I did, it was sucked past the glass teeth. The tiny skymouth spread its limbs, reaching for purchase, stretching. It grasped a flap of the mouth and didn’t let go. It reached for another, and another. It began to choke the monster from inside.
The giant skymouth thrashed. Tentacles loosened as it clawed at its own mouth.
I fell away from its grip, and when a gust from the skymouth’s struggle hit my wings, I rose with the wind until I leveled off on a steadier gust. My wings still bore me up.
As soon as I was steady enough, I turned and flew at the skymouth one more time. On the monster’s other side, I saw Nat dive towards it, arrow nocked to bowstring.
I pulled my own bow and nocked an arrow. Aimed at its eye.
Nat was now out of my sight, hidden behind the bulk of the skymouth. The monster rose between us, reaching and reaching. I dove forward.
The air around me took on the sound of gust and the throttled whisper of tentacles thrashing through the air. My glide became turbulent, but I kept going.
The strangling skymouth, fighting its own internal battle for breath, could not control its limbs. I could see its eye, the size of my head, and hear the liquid in its echoes. I held my bow steady.
My elbows ached against the winghooks. My left forefinger and index held the bolt steady against the bow sight. The rest of my hand gripped the bow hard. The gust I rode now was a steady one, and I’d set a straight course. I checked the wind one last time as I drew the bowstring back to my cheek. I held until I was sure that I would crash directly into the creature if I missed, giving me a chance with my last knife. And then I opened my mouth to scream one more time, drawing all my breath. Hoping I had enough strength left in my voice.
Screaming rendered all other actions, fighting and flying and shooting, sharper. I had become an arrow of sound aimed at the most terrible creature in the city. The monster began a slow turn towards me.