Cloudbound Read online

  “Those skills belong to the towers now,” Kirit reminded Moc. “Don’t call them Singer skills.”

  Moc wobbled as the gust we rode guttered and then strengthened. He wasn’t watching for wind shifts as he should. “Pay attention,” Kirit scolded. He tipped a wing and flew ahead of us, frustrated, and we let him go.

  The curve of Moc’s wings wavered against the blue sky, and I began to calculate how he might adjust them for more control.

  Which was why I didn’t see anything when the wind disappeared from beneath us.

  6

  A HOLE IN THE WIND

  My wing’s silk spans guttered loudly and bellied in their battens. My ears popped as I flipped and spun. I dropped from the sky, Kirit falling beside me.

  Flailing, searching for a breeze. Finding nothing. My gorge rising. Falling. I was falling again.

  The clouds rushed up to catch me.

  My wings were still locked, but nothing supported them. I panicked, my feet kicking wildly, which only made me spin faster. The clouds seemed to open like an eye, the sky and the towers flipped upside down, became teeth in a giant mouth, and we fell towards it, too afraid to scream.

  In a glance on my next spin, I saw Moc falling above us, flailing. I could no longer see Kirit. I couldn’t control my wings in the air.

  My breath and my heartbeat grew loud in my ears. I’d fallen before, broken wings twisted around me, the sky blocked by splintered battens and torn silk. Falls were always filled with noise caused by wind whipping past. Now all went silent. The wind didn’t roar as I fell through it. Each inhalation grew more difficult. I tried to recover by unlocking my wings and forcing them to a hard curve. I fought for any breeze. Spreading my ankles as wide as I could in my footsling, I hoped for more lift, a bigger foil for any available air.

  Kirit flipped back into view, gasping for breath, almost crashing into me. For a moment, she struggled beside me, face ashen, lips purple. It felt as if a windgate had opened, as in my nightmares, and once again sucked all the air out of the Gyre, and me with it. But we were in open skies, not the Spire. Confused, I grappled the air between us too late, just as Kirit had once reached for me and missed. Then I tumbled away.

  Nothing slowed our descent.

  City and sky rolled white and blue around me. Moc screamed, breaking the silent void. I shouted for help with what little breath I had. Tiers rushed past, and the clouds grew close. Below me, then above me, a swirling void within the white pulled at me. The clouds rose over us.

  I couldn’t see Kirit again. My heart felt like it was about to fly from my chest, and I’d always been falling. I would always fall. What would Beliak and Ceetcee think happened? Doran?

  My mother. My family.

  Elna’s heart would break. Two more she loved, lost to the clouds. I couldn’t let that be the last thing she knew. Nor Ceetcee and Beliak, when we’d begun to form a life together. I wouldn’t leave any of them like this. I flipped in the void, fought gravity. Tried to rise with every muscle. Every breath.

  The light grew dim, then brighter, then dim again. My hair whipped around my head and spilled across my face. My new hunters’ wings creaked ominously. I fell past the shadows of broken bone long hidden from the city; past gray tower trunks I’d known well above the clouds that here were strangers.

  Useless wings! They churned the void without effect. My footsling tangled around my feet. My body spun, momentum pushing me into a new tumble that left me gasping and unsure which direction was up. All was white and gray and shadow. At the edges of my eyes, darkness began to close in. Now I could see no towers in any direction. Only cloud and my own flapping robes and wings. Pressure built in my ears.

  I imagined a tangle of ropes stretched across the cloudlight like an old bridge. I thought I saw shadows in the distance.

  My feet caught—or were caught by—something rough and damp. Soggy sinew and fiber wrapped one ankle and trapped the other leg at the calf. I could almost breathe, but all smelled of mildew and damp. Gravity pulled on me, stretching me painfully as it fought to keep me. And then my body jerked, my neck and shoulders snapping hard.

  Was I dead? The netting spun, wrapping me, wings and all. I felt a breeze against my cheeks. Wind. I snapped hungrily at the clearer air.

  Was I alive? I’d fallen through the clouds. I was supposed to be dead.

  The netting had a familiar scent, heavy in the nostrils. Like muzz. My vision wavered. Did I hear laughter?

  “Grab the fledge and the Skyshouter. Clouds take this one,” the air whispered.

  I’d seen small birds pretend to be dead when a larger bird hunted them. I sank as deep into the net as I could and acted as if the muzz had taken me.

  The netting bounced and wobbled as someone landed near me, then took off.

  Silently, I sang The Rise in my head, then other songs Tobiat had taught us, starting with “The Terror of the Clouds,” fighting off muzz-sleep the whole time.

  They crack the bones

  They eat the stars

  They carry—

  Once again the song’s words slipped away, lost.

  Another wobble on the net, and then turbulence. Shouting. Kirit’s voice. Kirit trying to fight. The sound of tearing wingsilk. I fought to roll over in the sticky net. Failed. I reached fingertips—all I could move—to my quiver. Empty.

  My arrows had spilled in my fall. My bow tangled in the net, pinning me. If I moved too fast to free it, I’d follow the arrows into the void.

  “Go after her! We need her and what she’s carrying. Can’t have gotten far with that rip in her wing.” A familiar voice? The wind? The muzz muddled my thoughts. Kirit had fought her way free. That much I knew.

  The netting bounced again as another flier—the last? I hoped so—launched.

  They thought Kirit had the codex, not me. We’d never traded bags back. I’d lost her, and Moc; I could at least protect the codex. I lay still, my right hand gripping my father’s carved chip. How long was long enough to lie here? How would I find Moc? Was Kirit hurt? My mind waded through the effects of the muzz, fighting sleep with questions, anger. I bit the soft inside of my lip, hard, shocking myself awake with the pain. Eventually, I could think again.

  I struggled, working the sticky net loose enough to reach my bow and untangle it from the sticky ropes. Waved the arc of bone and tendon above and beside me, getting my bearings in the dim light. If I’d practiced echoing instead of singing for the past seasons and could echo as well as Kirit or Moc now, I might not have been so blind here.

  Still, using the bow and with my eyes growing accustomed to what light there was, I gained a sense of my situation. I lay on my back in a flat net. Nothing above me but shifting clouds. The sticky net held me tight. I had to get free, to find the laughter’s source. To find my companions. I set the bow back over my shoulder, turning instead to the short-handled glass-tooth knife the council had given me after Spirefall. Reached to the side and prayed for contact.

  The knife caught the netting. I felt fibers begin to split beneath its edge. I sawed, my shoulder muscles protesting the angle. Finally, the net broke and I fell again.

  But this time I fell into the wind.

  I let myself drop into the clouds, hoping I wouldn’t hit anything. Half furled my wings. Above me, the net’s remains sagged: a hole where I’d been, but the rest spanned the gap between two thick tower trunks.

  The wind rushed past my ears as I fell away.

  When I’d built up enough velocity, I spread my wings and let them fill. Then I arched my back and dragged hard at the wing grips. I’d escaped the wind shadow, if that’s what had caused our fall. And the net. I could avoid crashing cloudblind into the tower if luck stayed with me. Half a hunter’s work was luck and patience. Even if I’d spent the last months arguing Laws in council, I would always be a hunter at heart.

  I bumbled into an updraft that bore me higher into the gray, damp clouds. Around me, dark forms, thick trunks of towers. Bissel? Grigrit? I had no ide
a where I flew.

  Was that the shadow of a ledge? Perhaps. I aimed for it, slowing my glide so that I wouldn’t smash myself towerside if I was wrong. I needed to rest. To get my bearings. Then I’d figure out how to get above the clouds.

  The ledge was barely that: a slim spur almost overrun by the tower’s bone core. Still, I could stand on it and lean against the core wall. Let my legs stop shaking from the exertion. Breathe. Air filled my lungs, a breeze played with my hair.

  Around me, the clouds were not a constant thickness. This was a surprise. From above, they’d appeared almost solid, a wall of white. Below, when a sunbeam broke through, I could almost see the next tower over. And then I could see it clearly.

  The Spire’s massive carved wall appeared in the clouds, then disappeared again, back into shadow and mist.

  A low whistle nearly escaped my lips. It looked so close. No giving away my position, if anyone was nearby to hear. If I hadn’t imagined the voices.

  Then the clouds closed. No matter what I had imagined, I was on my own, below the city.

  I peered again into the clouds, waiting for another break. My eyes ached with staring at the white. Mirages appeared: spots of distant glowing blue pulsed where I looked too hard. The damp began to get to me, and perhaps the shock of falling also. My legs shook and my teeth chattered. I could not stay there. Not without arrows. Not this close to the Spire, where bone eaters and who knew what else lurked.

  * * *

  My time became measured in breaths. Too many to count. In staring at the white air, at the shadows within it, while thinking of my family far above. Elna, Ceetcee, Beliak. My growling belly. The damp.

  I would go mad with it. I would have to fly soon, or try to climb. No one returns from the clouds. Wrong. I’d return. I’d prove everyone wrong. And I’d bring Moc and Kirit with me—if I could find them.

  Patience rewarded, finally: a sunbeam wormed its way through the cloud wall, illuminating mist and edges so beautifully I gasped. The air was still chilled, but the Spire loomed before me, piercing thick heaps of clouds in its rise.

  The breeze buffeting the ledge carried a thick smell, sweet like rotting apples, but heavier. I recoiled from its sudden slap on my senses, bumping my head against the tower core. Then the smell disappeared as quickly as it had come.

  Within the clouds that surrounded the lower Spire, a large shape, darkly solid and slow-moving, was outlined crisply against the brighter clouds. My skin prickled, increasingly cold. I reached for my quiver again, before remembering it was empty. I couldn’t make out tentacles or teeth, and the shape was wrong for either skymouth or bone eater.

  I thought I heard the rhythm of voices again, far distant, blown on the wind coming from around the Spire.

  What was the shadow? Why was it circling the Spire? Whose voices were those? Where had Kirit and Moc gone?

  So many questions. I struggled to get my bearings. Plan, Nat. Don’t just react.

  Go up, as fast as I could? Or try to figure out what was happening, here below?

  We’d fallen, impossibly, between Grigrit and Bissel, while taking the Spire on our right wingtip. Had we fallen straight down? It had seemed so. And when I’d flown up, it had been at a relatively sharp angle. Perhaps I stood on Bissel? I was obviously not far from the Spire, although I’d never been so many tiers down. Whatever made the slow circumnavigation of the Spire’s walls must be close to the cloudtop.

  Closer than I was.

  Was it still morning? I couldn’t tell by the sunbeam’s angle, rapidly dimming as the clouds closed. I had to make my decision soon, or I’d find myself trying to fly cloudblind, or scaling Bissel with only the pitons Beliak had given me.

  Logic said, Return. Go to the council. Let them send a search party for Kirit Skyshouter and the Singer fledge.

  Curiosity said, Investigate. And rekindled friendship said, Find them now. I shook my wings open and launched into an upswirl of mist. Soon I caught a powerful windflow around the Spire and rode it.

  The wind led me away from the shadow-shape. But if I was right, the gust would carry me back around the Spire. If I was lucky, I’d find a handgrip or wall carvings to cling to.

  If I was unlucky, I’d end up deeper in the clouds.

  Cold and damp chilled my skin as I flew around the Spire’s wall. My cheeks, long accustomed to dry air, felt slick. My ears, long used to the city’s noise, searched for sound.

  It had been a long time since I’d been so alone. Since Allsuns, over a year ago, and then only for a short while.

  The quiet of flying solo in the clouds, the mist my only companion, made me edgy.

  Even when I was Lawsbound. Elna and Ceetcee, Beliak and Tobiat had filled my quarters with friendship, family. Before that, I’d had Kirit, always nearby, and our wing group, practicing our flight skills around our crowded tower. Shouting to each other from open balconies. The entire city was a family. We didn’t sequester ourselves away from one another. That was something Singers did.

  “Put myself into a bit of a tight spot,” I whispered to my absent friends, my companions, my family. “I’ll make it back.”

  As I came back around the Spire, I spotted a shadow below me and far forward. The sun’s angle in the clouds chased the dark spot with ripples of light.

  I trailed the shadow from three tiers above until it disappeared around the Spire. The mist and my hunters’ colors cloaked me well enough, I hoped. Far below, at a break in the mist, a net swung in the wind, lopsided, and a hole cut in its webbing.

  This was where we’d fallen.

  I hadn’t imagined it. What had happened to us?

  Above me, another shadow loomed beneath the clouds, closer now. Unmoving. I passed beneath it: a bone spur and wire construction attached to the Spire with bone screws and pegs. It lined up with the shadow’s path below.

  My wingtip grazed the Spire wall with a skitter. Pay attention, Nat, or fall forever!

  I tightened my fingers in my wing grips and shifted my body weight, slowly easing my glide away from the tower. Before I’d gotten too far, I spotted the carvings that marked an upcoming handgrip—a safety precaution tower fledges were taught to fly for in emergencies.

  I risked flying closer to the wall again. Unwrapping my fingers from the grips, I locked my wings, wrapped my elbows around the winghooks and readied myself to reach into the air. Wobbled and almost slammed into the Spire wall. Then I saw the handgrip: crusted and overgrown, but still usable. I grabbed, jerking my already tired shoulders so hard I nearly cried out. A small rodent—gray, with a hairless pink tail—scooted out of its hiding place in the grip, making me jump but not let go. The rodent began to climb away. I swung there, catching my breath, until I found a place to rest my toes as well.

  Soon, the shadow circled below me. I could hear regular noises coming from it. Conversations, perhaps. Whistles. No birds, no animals that I knew, made noise like that, save one. There were people in the clouds, working the Spire’s side. No one was going to believe me, should I ever return above the clouds to tell them.

  Another break in the mist gave me a glimpse of the space between the Spire and Bissel. Distances narrowed far below, until the towers seemed to grow together. In the muted distance, other towertops stopped midcloud.

  Those towers hadn’t risen when the city did. Some had broken. We knew this from Tobiat’s songs. Others stopped growing. The city grew past them. Forgot them.

  Not everyone had forgotten.

  The noises grew louder as, below me, the shadow’s edges sharpened. Plinth-shaped, like the city council’s meeting space, but smaller by half. And unlike the council’s platform, this one was not suspended between the towers. This platform floated.

  I stared, blinked and stared again. This was no cloudtouched dream. Below me, bulbous shapes rose silver above the plinth, visible only because the sunlight hit them cloudwise.

  Skymouths. Hanging right below me.

  My feet scrambled against the Spire’s side, trying to c
limb away fast. In the cloudlight, the creatures’ limbs dangled limp, trailing silver in the wind, and very visible within the cloud cover’s shadows. I cursed at my fear, trying to drive it away.

  These weren’t skymouths, not anymore.

  They were four filled air sacks made of skymouth carcasses. They supported the platform below.

  These air sacks floated on their own, without wings. Tethered to the plinth, they wobbled in the wind, but without a skymouth’s natural motions. The monsters’ corpses hung in the cloud-ridden air, buoying the plinth’s corners, while the platform’s center sagged against several bone supports.

  The skymouth air sacks had been filled to near bursting with gas. Rot gas? That was the only gas I knew that rose, but it was unstable at this volume.

  On that plinth, figures worked. Gray robed, some of them. Others, wearing brighter colors at the plinth’s far edge flickered and disappeared. On both sides, shadow figures moved wing-shaped oars the size of windbeaters’ wings to steer the plinth around the Spire’s trunk.

  The shapes and colors resolved themselves as even more clouds shifted: gold hair, and black. Four figures who looked very small at this distance rode the platform as it circuited the tower.

  My fingers wrapped the Spire handgrip, and my foot struggled to stay on its resting notch. Still, I felt as if the air had disappeared beneath me once again.

  What I saw made no sense.

  Spotting more grips below me, I descended another tier, intent on seeing more.

  * * *

  On the Spire’s mossy side, my blue and brown wings were barely dark enough to blend into the shadows. The light had faded again as moonlight replaced sunlight. I couldn’t judge distances well in the dim, but I was much closer at least.

  As I snuck up on the plinth, a brighter moonbeam sliced the clouds. Pieces of the whole structure appeared. A long boom swung from the plinth’s center, holding a net aloft. Another net was undergoing repairs by two figures who were still small, even up close. Children.

  Small fingers do fine work. Doran’s words echoed through the last of the muzz.