Cloudbound (17 page)

Wik leaned forward and whispered, “Now you understand.”

“Quiet!” a guard shouted.

I searched the crowd until I found Beliak. “Take the fledges somewhere out of harm's way.” Beliak and Ceetcee, with Elna between them, herded the fledges to the plinth's edge, trying to move them away before the Conclave began.

“Councilor,” Viridi whispered to me and Wik, “you do your duty.” She wore a white robe decked with Lawsmarkers. This close, I could see the tattoos on her face and arms: knives, bows, several I couldn't make out.

Those five words choked me. “This is wrong.”

“It is tradition,” Viridi said, and no more.

Motion on the platform: the fledges leaping for Varu, the nearest tower, with my family readying to follow.

Elna turned and shouted at Doran and Ezarit. At me. “This cannot be undone.”

Ceetcee kept her back to the councilors and Singers, her shoulders heaving. She didn't look at me.

Beliak raised his hand to me, then looked at it strangely as a shadow passed across his fingertips. He turned his face to the sky, and his frown darkened.

My gaze tracked his. A shadow now eclipsed all of us, but all I could see overhead was blue sky.

Ezarit looked up as well, confused. Wary. “Skymouth?” She reached for a knife. I, for my missing arrows.

The elder Singer from Grigrit laughed. “Would serve you all right.” A guard silenced him as more people began to point, both on the platform and in the towers.

Ezarit gazed up as more of the plinth fell under full shadow. The glass beads in her hair dimmed.

A foul smell hit me. Rot gas. And something else. Another smell, fainter.

“Move! Doran shouted. “Everyone, get in the air!”

I unfurled my wings and saw Hiroli doing the same. Beliak took Elna in his arms and leapt from the tower. Ceetcee followed.

Instead of leaping to safety, many councilors stared at the sky.

Small suns began to fall onto the platform, catching the oil-proofed surface and setting it alight.

Smoke rose, curling around and defining the edges of a small shape above us. A curve of blue-silver shimmered in the air.

A floating plinth, suspended from skymouth husks. Maybe the very one we'd allowed to get away from us that morning at Bissel.

“Run!” I shouted to anyone who would listen. “Fly!” I grabbed for Moc, but Hiroli had him. Pushed a guard towards Wik. “Grab him and fly!”

In the smoke, the small plinth passing above us appeared to be lined in skymouth hides. Invisible, except when silhouetted against sky and smoke. Above it, the outlines of four inflated skymouth husks bobbed.

From the safety of the invisible plinth, gray-winged figures hurled flaming balls of rot gas down on the council.
Gray wings. Blue robes.

“Singers!” Vant yelled. The guards on the council plinth, wings blue and green and black, took to the air to fight them. The councilor from Wirra shouted, “How many are there?” A southeastern junior councilor yelled, “They're trying to free the others!”

Singers?

Doran roared above the tumult, “Who has been hiding them?”

One attacker leaned to throw the rot gas clear of the plinth. He stared at me for a moment—dark eyes, face free of silver marks—then dropped his bone-chip-weighted ball of flame.

The rot gas hovered in the air over the council, trapped by the wind until the plinth began to burn in earnest. Flames licked sky. Strips of silk and tendon began to fall away. The rot gas itself caught fire. Screams and coughing cut through building walls of smoke.

Then the shadow passed beyond the smoke and disappeared. I felt full sunlight on my face, while a different heat pulsed around me.

“Move!” I heard Wik shout again. He was grappling with a guard, and the guard was winning, pinning him down.

The plinth burned and crumbled around us as the sun shone down, uncaring. More councilors began to reach the plinth's edges and to jump. Many tangled and fell: wings and arms and kicking feet.

A silk-wrapped foot hit my arm. A hand clawed the air above my head. I'd leapt without realizing it.

A roar of flames beating against silk and fiber nearly deafened me. The elder Singer who had laughed at Kirit fell past, his fingers reaching, grabbing. He touched the edge of my robe, then gravity pulled him free.

I fought the heated wind, trying to stay aloft. Too close and my wings would catch. Too far and I wouldn't be able to help. I searched for a way to assist, remembering Ezarit's dive for me.

In the distance, the fledges and my family landed on Varu's towertop. They were safe.

I dove into the smoke.

In the choking, screaming air of the platform, Wik tried to help people fly away, instead of throwing them down. Even as he, himself, remained wingless and exposed.

I tried to reach him. The platform tether to Naza began to burn.

A hot gust blew me sideways, towards Varu. I could not find Doran. Nor Vant.

More blackwings appeared, flying to the nearby towers and onto the plinth. Two lifted Wik and flew away. More followed, carrying their own burdens.

One came at me, arms reaching, but Ezarit shot between us, knocking the wind from the black foils and sending her tumbling. “Fly, Nat!” She dove then, her own wings locked, a gray-winged attacker behind her. A knife gleamed in her hand.

The plinth ripped into three flaming pieces and spilled its contents to the sky. I flew through the smoke as the city council's plinth fell into the space between the towers and tumbled, a flaming sun, towards the clouds.

I dove after it, and the people who were falling with it, my arms out, reaching.

 

PART TWO

STOLEN

 

Black kaviks, dodging heated air, flew a wide circuit around thick columns of smoke. They rasped at the shadows below, the struggling shapes fading from gray to white, but could not aid the fallen or the lost. The messengers landed on ash-streaked towers that bore the living through the air.

FORTIFY

Tower by tower, secure yourselves,

Except in city's dire need.

 

13

ASH AND MIST

Gray smoke tendrils wove through white clouds. Thick mist parted before me as I dove through hot air; ash tangled my hair, pushed into my lungs, darkened my tucked wings. I descended, resolving that those I could reach would not fall, searching for a place where the air cleared and I could breathe. Around me, shreds of silk and fiber drifted feather-light and fire-bright.

The smoke left traces on my skin like dark tears.

Below me spun a councilor from Haim, half-winged and flailing. He called for help. Shouts filled the wind, my ears.

Reaching, my hands caught his, and I arched my back, heading for the strongest draft swirling the smoke. The councilor kicked the air, trying to climb, dragging me down. I fought for wind and lift, but met only smoke and weight. To continue meant falling from the sky, from my family. I had to let go.

I peeled my fingers from his arm and slowly his grip tore from my wrist, breaking skin in his desperation. His screams wrapped around me, tore at my ears until I heard nothing else, long after the councilor had disappeared from view.

A hole in the mist slowly sealed, his passage erased, save for a ragged headache that would not disappear so easily. Circling up, my eyes burned, red from smoke.

The sky above cleared of attackers.

I dove again, deeper. Shadows spun below; the falling had passed me. They merged with the dark forms of towers, and I altered course, trying to avoid a sudden stop at the junction of wind and bone.

On a bone spur off my left wing, a figure gestured as if trying to brush the air away. I turned, built up speed, and passed above the spur. Grabbed a handful of robe, an arm. I kicked hard against the wind and caught a better draft. The person I held moaned, but did not struggle. I circled higher, shouting with relief.

I had a terrible grip on them, all angles and pain, and I couldn't see their face, covered as it was by part of their gray robe. Dark stains dappled the fabric. Blood. A Lawsmarker swung from their shoulder, near holes where others had torn free. A Singer, plucked from the smoke-filled mist while the council fell. A person, who'd fallen when the platform was attacked.

I fought my way up, aiming for Varu and searching for each strong gust that would carry me into the light, away from the sifting ash. Skyblessed luck let my wings remain unscorched and whole.

Doubled shadows passed above me, other rescuers, with those they could save.

An updraft carried me above the heated air, the wind strong around Varu—its profile lower than the towers around it a result of previous failed rebellion against the Singers. My arms and shoulders ached from grappling the Singer.

Only when I landed on Varu's slim tenth-tier balcony did I turn to look out at the space between Narath and Naza, where the city council's flags had played the breeze.

The attackers and their skymouth-floated, sky-cloaked platform had disappeared. Once again, the blue horizon held no gray wings, no Singer cloaks. Only blackwings circled the nearer towers. Several clustered around Varu.

A faint pall hung in the empty air where the council had stood moments before. The wind dispersed the smoke, bled it bright-edged into the clouds.

*   *   *

On the crowded Varu balcony, bone pots held struggling stone fruit trees. A dazed part of my mind wondered at this: the tier was too low and faced the wrong direction for stone fruit. The rest of me scrambled to save a life.

An empty whipperling cage sat on a low table. I pushed both aside and laid the Singer gently on the balcony floor. Blood-matted hair, mottling Amrath tower marks wound through amber and silver-streaked braids. The Singer had been trying to fit in with their host tower.

I bent and put two fingers against the ash-dark skin of their wrist. Felt a jumpy pulse. Watched their eyelids flutter. Open to pain-clouded eyes.

“Nat,” the Singer whispered. They knew me. Viridi. Her tattoos highlighted the pallor of her skin, etched in silver.

“Help!” I shouted to the tier. “Someone help!” The wind swirled my words.

Her robes were burned in several places. When she rolled on her right side to vomit, I could see leathery, blistered skin through the holes in her robes. A gash over her ear. The burns smelled of rot gas.

“Shhh,” I said, trying to comfort her. Swallowing hard to avoid throwing up myself. “Shhh. Someone will come.” I tore a piece of her robe and pressed it as gently as I could to the wound on her head.

She was shivering. She wouldn't last long in the cold air.

“Councilor,” she whispered when she finished retching. She stretched a hand towards my satchel.

“I have no water, Viridi. I wish I did.” Blood oozed through the fabric of her robe onto my fingers, dark and sticky.

She pushed at my arm. “The codex page, Conclave? Wik said you found it. Do you have it still?” Each word cost her.

I couldn't lie to someone who might die. “I do.”

“Break it. Now.” She closed her eyes. Her fingers waved at my satchel.

Break it? After the trouble Kirit and I went through to get it? No—she was right: Doran would use the page to support another Conclave with the surviving Singers, if he could. Viridi was right.

I took her hand and put it over the cut on the side of her head. “Keep pressure, here.” Then, remembering Kirit sorting through the Spire rubble, I pulled the thick bone page from the bag and readied to throw it over the tier's edge.

“No.” Viridi groaned, trying to get my attention. “Someone could find it. Might use the Conclave count against us. Smash it.”

Her injuries had rendered her incoherent. No help had arrived, and the tier was silent. She stared at me, her eyes demanding I act. So I stepped back and slammed the tablet into the tier, as far from her as possible. Maybe the noise would get us attention from the tower.

The Conclave page cracked into one large piece and several smaller ones. Between the bone pieces, brass gleamed, looking nearly new. I glimpsed etching, like the other plate in my bag. More detailed than my father's drawings had ever been. “What is that?”