The sun rose higher above the council platform, and the city rumbled again. Doran stood near the Singers, waiting for the towers to calm. He paced and gestured to the guards to prepare to fly. “There is little time for this.”
Ezarit strode across the platform towards him. Her fierce gestures gave no doubt Doran and now Vant were being buffeted by her words. Hiroli trailed her. As soon as my footsling was repaired, I followed. By the time I caught up, Ezarit was fuming.
“Ezarit, please. This is a guard’s duty,” Doran was saying.
“To fly Conclave? No. This is a council duty. Council voted it. We will not let someone else carry that burden.” I heard echoes of Kirit’s words atop the Spire. You have no idea what you do. How horrible it is. These are people, Nat.
Vant threw up his hands. “A trick! A distraction.”
“If we order it, we must carry it out,” Ezarit said, calm and deliberately. “You too.”
Doran held up a hand before Vant, now gray faced, could argue. “The councilor is right. Each of us will carry a Singer, and the guards will help if they are needed. We’ll draw markers.” Hiroli picked Moc. Doran and a guard, Wik. Ezarit, the elder Singer. I had Viridi. Others moved to their charges as well. Macal, his jaw drawn tight, stood behind another Singer councilor.
The wind snapped at our robes, our still-furled wings. My stomach curdled. I thought of my father, his Treason Lawsmarkers dragging him down, falling through the clouds so long ago. Someone had carried him to the city’s edge. Someone had let him go. Today I would be that someone. How could I go through with it? My fists balled, and I pressed them to my temples, trying to think of a way out of this.
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.