Cloudbound Read online

  Good for her. The girl seemed quiet, compared to her brother. But only compared to her brother.

  I sealed the bucket of heartbone in a pannier and shouldered Kirit’s satchel. The remaining codex page and the strange metal plate clacked together as they settled against my side.

  Aliati lifted the windbeater wings from the balcony and laid them against the central core wall. Readying for a quick departure. Angrily.

  Hiroli bowed to me. “Fly well, Councilor.”

  “On your wings, Councilor,” I replied. How had she voted? She’d been a refusal in my count, but Councilor Vant had said he’d talk to her too. I hoped she’d voted against the Conclave, but I could not bear to ask.

  If I manage to remain on the council, I promised the wind, I’ll seek more opinions than just my mentor’s. I’ll look beyond the council, to the towers as well. A lesson hard learned. I hoped it had been in time.

  All the fledges finally had their wings on. Aliati looped a long coil of spidersilk tether over her shoulder and doused the oil lamp. The sun was high above the clouds now, and it was time to go.

  Aliati descended the rope with a wave. “Will let you know what I find.” She ignored Hiroli’s raised eyebrows. The codex pages were lost to the clouds, probably, but I hoped she’d find Kirit.

  “I dropped something down below,” I said. “When I found the fledges.”

  That was an understatement. And a truth.

  “She doesn’t want to help protest the vote?” Hiroli asked. Now I knew how she’d voted.

  “She’s needed elsewhere.” I pulled the fledges to the tier edge, where Ciel waited, impatient and frowning.

  Ciel and I leapt first, circling to wait for the fledges and Hiroli. When I saw Ciel preparing to glide off on her own, I whistled for a chevron formation. She joined us, flying with angry, jerky motions, but we flew together. Hiroli took point, I flew to the west, and the three fledges arrayed between us, with Ciel leading.

  * * *

  The council plinth hung suspended between Varu, Naza, and Narath towers. The woven fiber platform was decorated with tower sigils and oil-polished. Green and blue silk banners strung from the tethers curled and uncurled in the breeze. As if for a celebration. Or a wingfight.

  Hiroli flew to the right of our formation, her wings bouncing the sunlight off the dark silk, each batten and seam taut enough to shine. As we neared the platform, Hiroli adjusted the curve of her wings and slowed. Let the fledges land before she did and scurry out of the way.

  They gathered, pale wings, ragged, gray robes, in a knot as close to Wik and Moc as they could. Ten Singers and one fledge were assembled in the plinth’s center, surrounded by blackwing guards. I spotted silver-streaked hair and knew they had Viridi, Rumul’s second in command. She’d been one of the Singers who’d judged my wingtest, nearly three Allmoons ago. The white in her hair was more dominant now. Wik clasped her hand in his.

  None of the assembled Singers wore wings. Not even Moc.

  Beliak fought to keep the fledges from getting too close to the guards.

  I curved my fingers around my wing grips, preparing to land. My wings responded beautifully, my descent slow and graceful. Like an established councilor, someone who should be heard. Except I knew the truth: I was such a fledge at politics, I’d only caused damage so far. What if I made things worse now?

  By the time my feet touched the plinth, several councilors watched me with unfathomable expressions, including Ezarit. How would I fare, when facing my mentor? I furled my wings quickly.

  Hiroli scanned the crowd as she approached us. “I don’t see Doran yet. Nor any of his party.”

  Meantime, the entire city seemed to be assembling around the plinth. Citizens from all the towers mixed on balconies and tiers. Guards in hunter blue and others wearing many colors flew back and forth, preparing to repeat what was said on the plinth, even though the council had not officially convened.

  Aside from the knot of Singer fledges staring at the impassive blackwing guards and the Singer leaders arrayed behind them, towers and plinth had a festival air, like Allmoons wingfights, with people arrayed to watch, as if in sport. The horror of this made my limbs feel heavy. Ezarit’s face was equally grim.

  More senior council members landed, including those from Grigrit. From their groupings, I guessed at alliances. Macal, from Mondarath, with a councilor from Wirra; both greeted Ezarit warmly.

  Doran Grigrit approached with Vant Densira, my senior towerman, and a councilwoman wearing tower marks from Laria, one of the silkspinner towers in the southeast. They furled their wings and arranged their robes, looking between the groups. Looking for me.

  I did not budge from my place beside Ezarit.

  Hiroli Naza walked ahead of us, chin up, proud to be accompanying Ezarit in dissent. Tolerating me.

  But the size of the group around Doran kept growing.

  Ezarit cleared her throat, preparing to call the council to order. Doran lifted his right hand, and four blackwings sounded klaxon horns on each of the towers.

  “What do you mean by this?” Ezarit asked. The other council leaders present swirled, cautious.

  “My apologies, Councilor, I did not see you there,” Doran said, bowing. “With such a large audience assembled, I thought it best to signal.”

  Ezarit inclined her head, an almost-bow. “A good idea.” Then her jawline firmed, and she matched Doran’s gaze. “Although I meant assembling Conclave so quickly, and without full lead council approval.” No one missed the tenor of her words.

  Doran bowed again, this time to me. “We had a majority. You were unavailable. Once the decision was made, it was felt that the faster we address this, the faster the city can begin to heal.” His voice sounded sad, but strong. The guards in the air relayed his thoughts to the crowd.

  “There are council members with new information,” Ezarit challenged him, her voice even. “In the interest of fairness, we should give them a chance to speak.”

  Scattered applause came from the towers as her words were relayed, but more dissatisfied sounds—boos and shouts—drowned it out. Doran, preparing to speak again, gestured towards Naza, the loudest tower, and shrugged, as if to say this is what the people want.

  I readied myself to step forward anyway, but even as I did, a crowd of fliers began to circle the plinth. Twenty in all, they carried nets between them. I recognized faces from nearby towers. Some guards. Artifexes. Sidra, Macal’s partner and Vant’s daughter. My own Ceetcee, carrying another below her. No.

  “You must all sit at the towers,” Vant shouted to the fliers.

  “We will not,” Ceetcee shouted, and landed, gently depositing the person she carried onto the plinth. Elna. “We are here to speak for the cloudbound, if no one else will.”

  The blackwings turned their focus on my mother, but did not move. I reached for my quiver by reflex. Found it still empty. Ceetcee stared at me, then shook her head. “And we will be heard.”

  She reached down and helped Elna stand. I heard my mother cough weakly and begin to speak. My anger slowly bled away, and pride took its place. They were speaking where I had not.

  “Before you do this, take heart,” Elna said, her words almost too soft for the guards to pick up. But Ceetcee repeated them loud enough. They were carried to the towers.

  Oh, my heart. Doran had stepped forward, but Ceetcee and my mother faced them down. One young and tall, her long braids swinging like tassels over her furled wings; a third of my wingmark tied to one shoulder, Beliak’s to the other. One bent and huddled in quilts, her eyes white and skyblind, her sparse hair white and blowing in the wind. I moved forward to help them. To share my evidence.

  Ezarit’s hand cuffed my upper arm in a vise, gentle but firm. “Let Elna speak. You will have your turn.” She spoke to the towers, and to Doran also, as well as to me. Councilor Grigrit had opened his mouth to protest.

  “My partner’s life was forfeit to the clouds,” Elna began. “My son’s father. For twenty Al
lsuns, I’ve felt that loss, and the city felt it too. We needed Naton’s wisdom. We need his knowledge of the city even today, but we will never retrieve it. Despite the fact that we know now his crimes were not crimes at all.”

  Agreement moved through the council, especially those gathered near Ezarit. As if in echo, the city rumbled softly beneath us. The guards relayed Elna’s words, and someone shouted, “Get on with it!” loud enough to carry on the wind.

  Elna continued. “You’ll patch the problem, not solve it. You’ll lose fine minds in the process. I am old; this does not matter to me as much as it does to the generations above me.” She put her hand on Ceetcee’s shoulder. Dared everyone to ignore the rise below Ceetcee’s ribs, the new life begun there.

  Ezarit released my arm. The wind snapped at the council flags, and I felt the eyes of the city on me as I took a place beside Elna and Ceetcee before Doran could begin speaking. I held up a hand. Felt the breeze on my fingers.

  “I fell through the clouds and discovered,” I said, raising the bucket of heartbone so that the smell caught the breeze, “that a tower in our city is being drained of its life on purpose. That it is dying, endangering those around it.” Doran held his sleeve over his nose, and several more councilors followed suit.

  “Worse,” I continued, “the Singer fledges we’d thought runaways? I found them, forced to do this work. There is Treason in the city, but it is not the Singers’ doing. We must postpone this Conclave. The Singers are not the city’s greatest threat.” I prepared myself to name the traitor. Dix had many allies.

  But Doran interjected. “How long would you postpone?” He dropped his sleeve, irritation turning to anger. “Until Kirit Skyshouter appears before this council? You were in favor of Conclave, but after one day with her, you’ve changed your mind. She’s corrupted you.”

  “She showed me a different perspective,” I said. The guards repeated my words and the city’s gaze focused on me. Elna stood upright, her hand shaking on Ceetcee’s arm, her eyes the color of the clouds, her chin up, head turned towards my voice, proud. “Then I saw more, below the clouds. The vote happened without enough information. I demand to speak in the Singers’ and the city’s defense.”

  As Doran’s face reddened, Vant Densira grabbed my arm. “You cannot represent Densira in this way,” he hissed.

  “I represent the city, then.” Before I’d spoken, the certainty that Doran had moved too fast buoyed me up. Now, as my own towerman shook me, angry, I worried. They played a bigger game; Doran had told me so. Now I’d jostled their board, tried to topple it. What would they do in return?

  “You reside on my tower; you represent that tower,” Vant said. “I apologize to the council for the junior representative.”

  Doran nodded. “I appreciate Densira’s loyalty in this matter.” He looked around the assembled council, preparing to address them again.

  But the protesters, who had continued to circle the platform, began to chant, “Let Naton’s son speak!” From the towers, shouts came fast and multivoiced, “Throw them down!” and “Speak!” both. Screams and sounds of fighting began.

  The city had become a roar of my own making.

  11

  WINGFIGHT

  In the tumult that followed, Doran dispersed guards to the tower tiers to quell the fighting and Ezarit raised one hand for silence, fingers sifting the air. The council platform quieted. Then the towers did as well. We’d narrowly escaped another riot. Ezarit chewed her lip. Doran glared at me.

  When it grew quiet enough to hear her, Ezarit spoke.

  “There are many issues the city must address. The Spire’s condition and its new dangers. Rumors about stalled tower growth. Complaints from the southeast about certain southwestern dealings. The situation with the Spire. But we cannot now proceed until we resolve the Singers’ situation,” she said. I shifted, uncomfortable, and ready to acknowledge where I’d been wrong. “The Singers preserved our history. They saved our culture from the clouds. But they made grave mistakes, committed horrible crimes. What can be salvaged from this? What is required to heal?”

  Angry muttering from the councilors. Angrier sounds still, when her words reached the towers, but the guards stood firm. There were no more fights.

  Ezarit waited until the platform quieted a second time. “A vote was taken while I searched for my daughter, Kirit, while Councilor Nat Densira was missing. Not all voices were heard. We cannot continue to lead through fear. Nat will speak now.”

  Those on the nearest tower balconies leaned forward, some using scopes to see.

  An angry rumble came from Varu. The Singers had punished that tower many times over, and their proximity to the Spire had meant a heavy toll when the Skymouths escaped.

  Vant gestured to the towers. “The city does not want to wait.”

  Ezarit pointed to the protesters and their nets. “The city is a family. But even a family disagrees from time to time. There is dissent now, and that is valuable to hear.”

  Vant’s face colored. He gestured to where the remaining Singer council waited: Wik, Viridi, the Grigrit Singer, and seven others I didn’t know well. Plus Moc. They looked back at him, bone faced. “Consider too, that if these Singers do not face justice, the city will remain caught in arguments and riots. The very towers will—”

  “Let us not go to extremes,” Macal said from where he stood. “This is rhetoric, and I would like to hear Nat’s proof.”

  “Proof,” Vant spat. “Your brother is covered in Lawsmarkers. You should have no voice here.” His tone indicated that if he had a choice, Macal would have no voice in the future.

  Once, not that long ago, I would have been by their sides as they shouted down an opposing argument. Especially one made by a Singer. I’d seen Doran design a plan of decisive action. But now I recognized the strategy they’d worked out. Uniting a group not by fear, but by singling out a common enemy. A successful tactic, yes. But with a terrible toll.

  A single Conclave wouldn’t satisfy the towers for long.

  Macal seethed. Though Wik was his brother, he’d left the Spire for the towers long ago, and renounced the Singers to stay on the council.

  I spoke again, raising my voice to reach as many as I could. “Listen! What I saw yesterday when I fell below the clouds is a more immediate danger than what happened in the recent past.”

  “Distraction and lies!” Vant cried. Now another tower, Naza, began to chant again. “Throw them down.” I was no longer clear on whether they meant the Singers, or me. Hiroli’s face reddened. Her tower.

  Doran stepped forward. “I understand a young councilman’s desire to speak,” he said, his tone suddenly conciliatory. “I’ve felt the same thing myself. But here, after the council has already voted? And inciting a near riot in the process?”

  I met his gaze. Held it. “It was a rushed vote.”

  “You say this when you yourself helped organize the vote beforehand?” Doran looked around at the gathered council, at the guards relaying every word to the waiting tiers. To Beliak and Ceetcee, who stared at the plinth surface, eyes wide. Now they knew the depth of my mistake. Now Ezarit knew too.

  My answer to him, and to them, was my feet firmly planted on the council plinth. My unwavering gaze. I say this. I will fix this.

  “You ask for more time, and according to council tradition, we must consider this, despite the urgency. You’ve stirred ire in the towers, but offer no way to calm the dispute,” Doran continued. His anger had cooled; he’d found a plan. Doran clapped his hands together, raised his voice in contrast to Ezarit’s calm. Across the platform, silk robes rustled as councilors turned to listen to him. Two repeaters circled overhead, alternating their departures so they could relay his words to the rapt towers. “And you also now claim Singer traditions are important to understand. Their codex, their … ‘heartbone.’” He gestured at the container I still held.

  “You’ve made the same claims yourself.” I nodded, despite Ezarit’s fingers clamping down on my
shoulder. Perhaps if I showed the towers I was willing to listen, Doran would have to listen to me also.

  “Ah, but that was before I learned that Singers still plot against the city, even now.”

  “What does he mean by that?” Ceetcee said. Two councilors behind me whispered to each other, echoing Ceetcee. What does he mean? My heart pounded in my chest.

  “You wish to delay the city’s healing at the very moment when it is ready to move forward.” He held his hands out to the towers, “When the slightest dissent brings fighting. The city can wait no longer; it is time for the guilty to be punished. Then we must move on, together.” Doran turned from me with a sweeping gesture that included the whole city.

  I drew a deep breath. Confronting Doran, halting a council? That had been terrifying, but now I had to do it again. But instead, Hiroli stepped in. She was speaking above her place, just as I had done, but she was Ezarit’s apprentice, and she spoke as one who had lost everything after Spirefall. The council gave her their attention. “We can move on, but perhaps it will be most fair, and most unlike the Singer judgments, to allow further discussion from all sides.” She gestured to me. “Even if we do not agree on every point.” Doran glared at her, but other councilors nodded agreement.

  The towers listened, quiet.

  Doran thought for a moment. Ezarit held up a hand to interject, but Doran spoke over her. “Perhaps your newfound dedication to Singer traditions will win your request for you. Singers battled in the Spire for the right to speak, did they not?”

  The world slowed around me. The flags flapped against the wind with hard beats. I heard an echo of Gyre winds and saw again my friend strike at me, and I at her, trying to wound, to kill. I had walked right into this trap and not seen it, though Ezarit had. “They did.”

  “It was called a challenge, and if you won, you gained the right to speak your truth to the city,” Doran continued. “You attempted one yourself, and lost. Perhaps you see yourself now as a bridge between tower and Spire? As your friend Kirit Skyshouter did?” He hesitated. “Or still does? Perhaps you can rescue those Singers so far fallen into crimes against the city, and restore them?” Doran gestured to the assembled Singer council.