From our ledge, we could see through the mist a short glide in several directions. Gray and green shadows gathered everywhere, except upwind. There, a dark cloud brewed, seeming to grow larger, then recede. Aliati watched it warily, so I began to do the same.
The wind carried few sounds to us, save an occasional dark rumble from the cloud.
“I’ll search first. Rest.” Aliati tied a tether to the bone spur so she could find us again and leapt from the ledge.
Wik shared pieces of dried bird his captors had given to him. He’d saved what he could, biding his time. Preparing to escape, even when addled by Dix’s drugs and cruelty. He hadn’t given up. I took a tiny strip of dirgeon. Kirit and Beliak did the same. We chewed it until it lost all taste and went stringy in our mouths. Ceetcee tried but spit hers out.
Beliak reached into his sleeve, to the pocket he’d had sewn there. He withdrew my whipperling, gray and shivering, but unharmed. “He’s been tearing up my arm, and my head’s pounding. Take him?”
“Maalik!” I was glad to see he was safe. But who would we send a message to down here? I let Maalik roost in my satchel. He settled down next to the brass plates, cooing at his faint reflection.
Ceetcee, Beliak, and I tethered ourselves to the ledge wall behind an outcropping in order to rest. Ciel curled up next to us. Soon she snored softly. Doran wrapped himself in his cloak and glared out at the mist, and Djonn leaned against the wall next to him, blowing on his blistered palms. The ledge grew quiet, each of us wrapped in our own aches.
Upwind, Kirit whispered to Wik, “What happened at Laria? Did you hear their conversations?”
Wik whispered back, “I didn’t hear much.” His voice faded, then returned: “… kept me secluded, but the webs carried sound if you knew how to listen.”
“Is Dix skytouched?” Kirit asked.
I listened hard for Wik’s answer.
Wik shifted, the silk of his robes rubbing against the wall. “I don’t know. She believes she knows how to save the city. Rumul believed the same thing. People are willing to follow belief.” He paused and took a deep breath. “But even Rumul had doubts and fears. Dix is so certain.” Wik’s voice quieted after each phrase. Then he coughed. “I am sorry about Ezarit.”
On the ledge, Kirit drew a shuddering breath. Wik hummed to her, at first tunelessly, then finding the notes for The Rise.
“Shhhh,” Kirit said sadly. “Blackwings might hear.”
I closed my eyes and let them mourn in silence. When I slept, I dreamt fitfully: Moc in Rumul’s lap, laughing at me. Doran demanding answers about a vote. Dix shouting and pacing, carrying a dead man on her shoulders.
I woke up stabbing at the air with my hands. Ceetcee whispered, “It’s all right,” in my ear. Around us, the others slept. Aliati had not returned.
“How do we go from here?” I leaned my head against Ceetcee’s shoulder. “We can’t return to the city. Not while Dix has control.” Our botched attack had delivered the city to her.
She squeezed my hand. “We’ll return. We’re part of the city too.”
When I looked up, she had set her eyes on the clouds. “I thought by protesting Conclave, I could end it,” she said. “That we could escape that debt to the cloudbound we all carry.” Her grip on my hand tightened. “We can’t undo what’s been done in the city’s name, but I could try to keep it from happening again.” Ceetcee frowned, then leaned towards me, nearly nose to nose in the darkness. “Shifting the way people think isn’t simple. The Singers and Ezarit knew that. Even Doran knows it. I think Kirit was trying, with her refusals. With the firebugs and the blackwings? You helped people think about what was happening. What I attempted with the protest? You achieved.”
“And I’ve dragged us here.” My voice wavered. “Stranded us. Stranded you.”
Ceetcee stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to my forehead. “Others in the city will begin to question because we’ve questioned. They may not follow Dix so easily. Sometimes it just takes one action to change things.”
Curls of cloud began to lick at the ledge and at our dirty footwraps, trying to disappear our legs beneath the mist. Ceetcee swung her foot until she could see her footwrap again, and I mimicked her motion. We kicked at clouds until they swirled away from the ledge, distracted for the moment from our griefs.
To be still in the clouds was to risk disappearing. I refused to disappear.
* * *
A shadow appeared in the cloudbank. Wik tensed, alert. I reached for my bow.
Through the mist came a familiar windsign—“retrieve.” Aliati dropped to the ledge, shaking her head. She’d had no luck.
“We need to search lower, more of us,” she said. Her hair was slicked to her head, and her wings, though they still repelled the rain, dripped water onto the ledge. The spidersilk spans were soaked, despite their oil-proofing. “Storm’s coming.” She gestured to the growing dark clouds. A buffeting crosswind was building. “We need a real shelter.”
“I’ll help,” I said. As I spoke, the wind increased. Our wings began to flutter, caught between the ledge wall and the swirling wind. Something struck my cheek, sharp and cold. I brushed it away, and my hand touched ice. Another piece hit me above my eye.
Ciel shouted, “Ow!” as more ice fell. Moc struggled to his feet, looking for an enemy.
The dark clouds nearest our ledge had grown nearer still and doubled in size. We’d experienced wind squalls in the towers, with rain, we’d watched lightning and thunder battle in the clouds. But a storm of this intensity was new to all of us.
What I had thought was darkness now seemed light by comparison to that cloud. We tethered as many as we could to the tower trunk, bodies huddled together behind the windward outcropping. Then the wind swirled and shifted, driving rain at us from the opposite direction.
Ciel squirmed, shocked. “It came on so fast.” Her face was suddenly illuminated: cheekbones, wide eyes. Then the ledge and sky turned white, the air smelled sharp, burnt. Hiroli nearly tumbled from the ledge with fear. “What is it?” she said. “Why is it happening?”
“Lightning,” Aliati said.
Beliak groaned. We tried to shelter him from the rain with our bodies, but he shivered with cold. Aliati knelt to press on his bleeding leg with a section of her robe. She looked up at me, water streaming off her face and braids. “We have to get him a place to lie down soon, out of the weather.”
She was right, but we couldn’t move the group in this storm. The winds would toss any but the most skilled flier into a tower or the abyss. But one flier could risk it. How far did the squall stretch? I began to untie myself from the tether.
Djonn grabbed my arm. “Storms that come quick go quick. Stay fast.”
I hoped he was right. We huddled miserably in the battering wind and rain, waiting.
When the thunder quieted, I caught snatches of Ciel singing The Rise to Moc. She’d added a verse. I heard the word “Skyshouter” woven into the song, then “Brokenwings.”
“I had no idea,” I said, “that storms were this strong.”
“They pass,” Aliati whispered in the darkness, agreeing with Djonn. “But they come in groups. Usually a couple at least.”
“How big are they?” Even as I asked, the rain slowed. Would the winds reach as high as the ghost cave? Could we go up again? “How much time between bands?”
Aliati shook her head. “No idea.”
I climbed from behind the outcropping and peered across the ridge, but saw only gray shadows, gray rain. Djonn, sitting nearest, said, “You should take shelter again.”
He tugged on my arm, then pulled me gently back as the humidity increased around us. I’d never felt so heavy, my skin sticky as spidersilk. An enormous boom made everything and everyone on the ledge jump again, but the tethers held us tight. Maalik, resting in my satchel, cooed fretfully. Moc began to shiver, and Doran and Ciel whispered to comfort him.
I readied myself to fly as soon as the weather passed, checking wingstraps, the contents of my satchel. Then light flashed and the crackling smell came again. My vision swam and my ears rang.
Hiroli jumped again at the noise. Ciel calmed her, trying to explain. She made a hand motion that Elna had used once. A sign for war. The clouds went to war sometimes, and made those sounds, those lights. When we were children, Elna had told Kirit and me that story, often. They must have told it in the Spire too.
I missed Elna searingly. Remembered watching a nighttime storm from the towers as a child. How the cloudtop lit up, then went dark. How red sparks sometimes danced for a few seconds atop the clouds. Elna had said the ghosts of our ancestors were fighting again. She’d said to never go looking for them in the clouds, that I would be lost.
“It’s letting up. I’m going to search.” I untethered and stepped from behind the outcropping before anyone could argue.
“And I,” said Wik.
“I saw a tower on my last search, right at the end of my tether. I’ll show you,” Aliati said.
Ceetcee and Doran agreed to remain with Beliak, Djonn, Hiroli, and the twins. They huddled against the ledge wall, trying to keep out of the spitting rain. Kirit hesitated, wanting to accompany us, but knowing the others would need help if the blackwings spotted them.
“I’ll guard them,” she promised. “I will stay.”
* * *
“The tower I saw was farther down, and to the left,” Aliati said. “There were bones out front, but they looked very old.” She didn’t say whether that could be a scavenger cache or not.
We had few tethers with us now; most were anchoring our remaining friends to the ledge. We relied on the single tether, and worked to stay together, flying close enough that we might not lose one another. Aliati began to echo, and Wik joined her, hoping to sound out any towers hiding in the shadows.
They echoed to their offsides as we flew, and all of us kept our ears open for blackwings or bone eaters. If we found a cave, we’d be much safer from them. And drier, and eventually warm.
Each time lightning pulsed, mist shimmered like glass beads on our wings. My legs ached from long stretches of flying and the footsling’s pull. Aliati had said storms could make old wounds ache too, and I was starting to believe her. I didn’t like it.
The clouds thickened and we began to whistle in order to stay together. “Retrieve,” for Aliati. “Defend” for me. Wik caught on and whistled four short notes. “Protect.” The clouds swelled and darkened ahead of us.
“Cloudburst,” shouted Aliati, breaking our small chevron formation. “We have to go up or down.”
“Down,” I said. The wind began to swirl. We dove as fast as we could, trying to get beneath the squall.
As we descended, rain and ice pelted us, sharp as spears. I could barely see Wik off my right wingtip. Weather rumbled around us, and white-hot light arced between thick clouds to our left.
“In there!” Aliati shouted and turned hard against the battering wind. Wik struggled for control and I, trying to make the turn in the turbulence of their wings, was blown up and nearly away. I tucked my wings tight, making as small a foil as possible, and fell. When I was low enough, I fought them open again and followed Wik and Aliati below the storm, into the shadow of a stunted tower trunk.
The tower’s bone overgrowth reached out to its neighbors, forming a wall. Thick knobs of bone slabs and bulges obscured what could still, in some places, be seen as tier divisions. Gaps along the outgrowth might allow us shelter, but we saw few places to land away from the hail and lightning.
Finally, Aliati pointed, “There! Two caves! One above, one below.” I could barely hear her voice over the wind’s roar now, but I followed her tack. In our rush to descend, we’d been blown off course. We’d overflown the cave and worked our way back around to it. We were nearly at the end of the tether’s length when we landed.
We clawed our way down the overgrowth, hands finding purchase in the soft green moss and lichen that grew on the tower trunk.
The higher cave was tiny and narrow. We climbed past it. The one below looked better for our needs.
* * *
As Aliati had said, the old bone pile in front of the lower cave was undisturbed. No fresh feathers. No bone eater stench.
The overhang provided more shelter than the ledge we’d left the others on, and the cave stretched back into the darkness. Light flashed behind us and something glittered within.
“I’ll guard the cave mouth if you want to scout,” Aliati said. She anchored the tether—our only connection to the ledge through the mist—with a looping hitch around the largest bone in the cairn.
Scouting was dry. I stepped farther inside, into darkness. Behind me, the opening framed the cloudscape, dim except in comparison to the cave.
My skin prickled. “No chance you have a lantern and a flint?” Djonn had both with him, but he was on the ledge. We’d lost much from the ghost tower’s caches, and we hadn’t much to lose to start with.
Aliati laughed. “No flint. Better you than me.”
We could use any light. Even luminescence. Kirit had been able to wake the littlemouths. So had Ciel. Something in their voices, in their Singer training. Wik had been trained to hunt skymouths and control them. Could it work on littlemouths?
“Hum something?” I asked him. If there were any littlemouths on the tower trunk, we might get some light. I hoped the storm hadn’t driven them into hiding. Wik looked at me strangely, but obliged. He began humming The Rise.
The area outside the cave stayed dark. Birdcrap. I stared into the rain, not looking forward to exploring the cave by bone hook.
“Look!” Aliati pointed, but not towards the outer tower. She gestured into the cave, where a single littlemouth glowed softly blue-green against the cave wall.
For a moment, all Wik could do was stare. “I didn’t know they could do that.”
The small creature didn’t generate a lot of light, but even a little was comforting. I felt my way forward until I stood next to the cave’s back wall. My fingers touched its dry hide. A loop of tentacle wrapped my wrist. Then it pulled away and the light faded. Wik had stopped humming.
“They like your voice. And Kirit’s too,” I said, hoping he would hum again without me needing to ask.
Aliati, silhouetted in the cave mouth, spoke through the dark. “Djonn thinks they luminesce so they can find each other in the clouds.”
I nodded, remembering the conversation, “Like our windsigns.” Wik had grasped those easily.
Wik tried again, louder. Slowly, in waves moving away from me, the cave glowed. Wik’s skymouth-ink tattoos reflected the light in response.
“That’s amazing,” Aliati said. The luminescence revealed a medium cave, with three alcoves. I gasped when I saw what had glittered in the lightning. Metal poles ringed in the walls, the alcoves. I walked to the nearest one, letting the littlemouths light the way. The tower core split around each pole, creating gaps that eventually joined to form the cave. Like the ridge wall near the council fall, this cave had been shaped deliberately, but with much more skill.
Metal was so scarce in the city, so valuable. Poles this size would be wealth beyond belief in the city—an upper tier’s worth, maybe, if we could pry them loose. Or ever go back home.
More metal glinted on the alcove walls.
“All right in there?” Aliati called. Behind me, Wik had already turned back, prepared to get the others. I ached to explore, but that could wait until everyone was safe. This cave was a much better stopping place than the ledge above.
We’d seen no evidence of recent bone eaters, but as I left the middle alcove, my foot brushed something that rustled dryly. Glass sparkled in the littlemouths’ glow. I bent closer and touched teeth nestled in an ancient skymouth hide. The whole husk was rimed with dust. A young skymouth must have once stumbled in here; the hide and teeth were all that remained.
Cupping my hand, I scooped the teeth into my satchel. They clattered against brass. Maalik squawked at me, awakened. “Sorry, friend.” The littlemouths on the walls slowly faded.
“Nat, there’s another squall coming,” Aliati shouted over the building wind. I hurried to the cave mouth, one hand tracing the wall. The bone was warm. Still alive down here. Alive, and trained long ago to shelter people within the expanding bone, rather than forcing them to climb higher, like our city.
A stretch of lightning reached across the clouds and lit up the cave.
“Look how long the boom takes after the light.” Aliati stared into the gray. Wik counted silently until a muffled boom sounded upwind of us.
“We might only have time for one run.”
More lightning flashed. Illuminated, the cave looked smaller, but we could see now that nothing lurked in its walls. There were no scavenger caches, but it felt safe enough. We could recover here and try to hunt for food. As long as we all survived the storm.
“Here’s where we’ll stay.” I reached in my bag and handed Aliati and Wik a glass tooth each. Aliati’s was the length of her hand, Wik’s slightly smaller. “Some good luck for our journey.” And for our survival. Those teeth would make good knives, eventually. My companions stowed them away.
“Can you carry Djonn, Nat?” Aliati asked. “I need to manage the tether.”
Djonn was lighter than Beliak, but his brace made him awkward to carry. I thought for a moment, then remembered the sling. Could I fly him solo? “I think so.”
“We’ll have to fight our way back to the ledge against that headwind,” she said. “Wind’s shifting.”
The clouds spun slowly in a great circle, the distant thunder much closer now.
* * *
To rise as high as we could before leaping into the wind, we climbed the tower trunk above the cave mouth and used the moss along its ridges as handholds, sinking our grips only when we needed to. We worked up and around the tower, reeling in the tether, until we were closer to the direction of the ledge. The plants were spongy and slick between our fingers. Some looked like old men’s beards, but clung to the tower side with the strength of spidersilk. Every surface cupped water from the storm, and our hands, knees, and feet grew wet. I shivered. I slipped, then regained my footing as I cursed the clouds.
Faster.
The clouds hung gossamer thin between our tower and the ledge, though nearby, darker bands of cloud gathered. I hoped we were high enough. Wik leapt first, and we followed.
When we launched, battered by the headwinds, Wik flew zigs and zags to reach the ledge. First we swept towards the ghost tower, far in the distance. Then we made switchback turns, flying synchronized, like Nightwings of old in the dark city skies. Aliati echoed now and then to help Wik, and the littlemouth began to luminesce on my shoulder.
“They can hear you too!” I laughed. She sounded delighted, but focused on coiling the tether as it grew slack. The ledge came into view as we hit the rain line.
On the ledge, Wik and I helped Ceetcee into her wings. She looked green, nauseated. “It’s normal,” she said, a hand on her belly. “Just harder than usual down here. I can still fly.” She winked at me while I tightened Ciel’s wingstraps, but I caught her looking nervously over the cloudscape. She knelt by Beliak, and I joined her at his side as she whispered, “Everything will be all right.”
“It will.” I touched her cheek. I hoped she was right. “Fly safe.” She pressed my hand close to her skin, warming it.
When they were ready, Ciel and Ceetcee jumped from the ledge and circled in the dark gray sky, waiting for us. Wik hooked Beliak, I lifted Djonn in the sling, and Doran followed with Moc.
Aliati and Kirit flew behind us with Hiroli.
We crossed between the towers on a storm gust, the most direct, most dangerous way. It was rough going, but with the wind behind us, we neared the cave quickly. At the very end, a spill of wind hit Ceetcee and she spun wildly and fought to right herself. I dove behind her, trying to help her and carry Djonn at the same time, until she evened out on her own.
The edge of rain began to splat the cave as we landed. Lichen and fern fronds clinging to the incline below the cave dipped and rebounded as each drop struck. The wide tower trunk’s overgrowths shuffled the wind into new patterns around the cave mouth. I set Djonn down as Ceetcee landed, then banked away until they moved inside the shelter, making room for me to land.
From the cave mouth, Ceetcee watched the sky, shivering. By the time the others came into sight, the rain fell in sheets and thunder had begun to boom again. Kirit and Aliati trailed behind, and Hiroli struggled.
I yelled out to them and at the gusts that bore them. “Hurry!” I leaned into the storm, reaching, trying to pull them closer with my voice. We were few enough, and too far lost already.