The platform below me continued its slow circuit while the fledges huddled in half darkness. Beneath their feet, only a thin span of fiber and silk kept them from being lost in the clouds. When I got close enough, I could see the pale creases in Moc’s robe where his wingstraps had recently pressed, but the wingset itself was nowhere to be seen. None of the fledges wore wings.
The risk of it took me a moment to comprehend. My own complicity took longer to weigh on me.
Above the clouds, I’d figured the missing Singer fledges for runaways, another council headache. I’d shared my assumptions in reports, and the fledges had been written off. But at least some of those fledges were here. Dix had brought them below the clouds, conscripted them, and taken their wings, while the council and the towers remained unaware. Cold disgust curled in the pit of my stomach. Everyone thought the fledges had run away and were hiding somewhere, because I’d told them so.
Even Ciel, who I’d assumed safe on another tower, had been missing for days. If the city was a family, we’d let some of our youngest charges fall. All of us but Kirit.
Now the fledges I’d called runaways curled on the plinth below me. My hand went to my knife, thinking to cut their tethers. And then what? They couldn’t fly. They looked too tired to attempt—wingless—an ascent of the Spire. And if we were caught? We’d all be thrown down.
To leave them here any longer was unthinkable too. Kirit wouldn’t leave them. I couldn’t either. But Maalik was gone, taking our message to Varu. I could not send for help. I had my knife, my bow, and a handful of pitons. Some rope. No arrows.
No hunter worth their wings would find themselves in a situation like this. No city leader either. I wasn’t prepared. But I’d survived worse.
I squared my shoulders, feeling the wingstraps dig in. Pulled my hood low to shadow my face. Began to work my way down the Spire’s grips and footholds. I’d bring them back to safety, and then the city would hear what they knew, and what I knew now: that Dix committed Treason.
First, I needed to take care of the guard.
He stood at the plinth edge, a boy several years younger than me. Black wings, wingmark still tied to his left shoulder. Since no one knew what took place here, his main task was to guard the fledges; his gaze was focused on them, not the Spire above.
I’d blended with the Spire’s mossy walls on the lee side while I inched closer, my muscles aching from the tight grips and footholds. When I was close enough, I pushed away from the wall and flipped, a perfect arc. I tackled the guard and pushed him into the platform’s thick hide. The guard yelled, but I pressed his face to the fabric. He struggled against my weight. Several fledges watched us, but didn’t move. I grabbed at the rope I’d carried since the Spire, but I needed more hands to bind the guard. More rope too.
“Help me!” I whistled, trying to get Moc’s attention, or Ciel’s. Why weren’t they moving? Their brassy-haired heads lifted, eyes scanning the darkness. I stuffed the guard’s hood into his mouth and put my knee into his back. Gestured urgently at the fledges. “Moc! Ciel!”
So slowly I could almost feel the moon age above us, Moc’s eyes focused on me. “Nat.” His voice was dull. Ciel left his side and scrambled across the platform. She took the rope from my hands and tightened it around the guard’s wrists. The guard groaned and struggled, but I kept him pinned.
“Get his feet too. What’s wrong with the others?”
The girl looked exhausted, her hair greasy, her skin nearly gray. “They’re not feeding us much,” she said. “Just this. I throw mine away, mostly.” She held out a square of what looked like rendered goose fat, only thicker and the wrong color. It stank like the Spire had.
Even as the guard struggled against my weight, I tried to comprehend. “They’re feeding you heartbone?” I stared into the fledges’ dulled eyes. Was this a drug? We were worse off than I’d thought—drugged, wingless fledges couldn’t possibly attempt a climb, or be much help to me at all. Only Ciel seemed able enough to help.
She bound the guard’s feet and released the straps of his wings. I pulled his wingset off, and without it, the bound guard froze, fearful of rolling off the plinth in his struggle.
“Throwing him to the clouds would be faster,” Ciel spoke, but she hesitated, unwilling to do it. After seeing Dix throw fledges down, and after falling so far myself—twice now— I knew that would never be my way.
“Ciel, how long do they leave you to sleep?” We had little time to figure out how to escape.
We had rope and nets, two pairs of wings—mine and the guard’s—both too big for any of the fledges. And we had a prisoner.
“Ciel, we need to go up. Fast.” I shook her gently.
Tears glossed Ciel’s eyes. “I figured no one was looking for us. A bunch of Singer fledges.”
“How long, Ciel?” The fledge had been through so much. How much could she help in this state? But she straightened and looked up.
“When it gets brighter, they’ll be back. We put the buckets on the pulleys then.” She pointed to the pulley ropes. “And they go up full, then come back down empty for us to fill again. In the morning, blackwing guards bring food down here, then take bigger sacks away from the gate up there. Those float.”
“They float. Like rot gas?”
Ciel nodded and pointed. Above us, the silver outlines of four skymouth husks, filled and floating held the platform aloft. “Like that.”
Connections began to light in my mind like oil lamps in the towers. Mining heartbone; sending it higher; gas being removed from an alcove; the Spire dying. Someone was preparing for battle, making rot gas, using the excess for lift. At the moment, who didn’t matter, although I knew Dix was involved. “I think I have a way to get us out of here.”
I’d thought the fledges were running away. That once the Singers were cut from our culture, the city would be safer. My father’s message chip swung from my wrist, its careful carvings deepened with moonlight in the Spire’s shadow. He’d seen the truth of things, where I’d leapt to conclusions. I regretted my assumptions and wished Naton could see what I saw now, and help me understand it.
Liras had said we were on the verge of a new age. New discoveries. Whatever this gas was, it was new too. And it might be more treasonous and terrible than the old ways. But it was going to get us out of here.
I eyed the tethers that attached the skymouth husks to the platform. Without them, the platform would collapse, the heartbone and the fledges would spill into the clouds. But the metal pulleys that allowed the platform to circuit the Spire without pulling away? Those were a different story.
Ciel saw where I looked. “We tried to loose the platform, but we couldn’t get the knots undone.”
The only way we were going anywhere was on this platform. If we untethered it from the Spire, it would rise. But we had to rise fast. “Dump everything over the sides you can. The booms, most of the nets.” I led the way. The booms struck the side of the Spire and bounced into the darkness. I was about to toss the windbeaters’ wings down too, when Ciel touched my arm.
“Wait. We can use those, I think.” She rowed the air beside us with one and the platform jerked against its bindings.
“Tether Moc well,” I told her while I threw all but one of the buckets over. “All the fledges are too woozy to help.” She bound one other fledge to the plinth, and grabbed another set of windbeaters’ wings, handing them to a third fledge who came to help. The two positioned themselves at the back of the plinth as I stepped close to the Spire wall and began untying the cams.
With one tether loose, the platform lifted precariously.
I waved for help. “Hurry, get the other side!”
Ciel dropped her foils fast as the platform lurched and skewed. She and I both tugged at the rope and metal until it snapped away. The platform began to drift up the Spire’s side, an edge dragging noisily towards the gate above, and the bone and wire construction beyond.
I should have thought more about how to steer the platform before I cut the tethers. But Ciel already had an idea.
“Help me now!” Ciel held windbeaters’ wing battens against the Spire, trying to fend us off the wall. She was too small to make much difference. I grabbed another large wingfoil and pushed too.
We rose, the skymouth husks bobbing overhead. It was still dark. We still had a chance to get away before the black-winged guards came with the fledges’ breakfast. When we’d climbed three tiers, we passed the alcove. It was an old Gyre tunnel, the gate stuck open, crusted with bone growth.
Inside, metal gleamed in firelight. A row of pots bubbled over low fires, and above those, gas collected in upended bladders. A young man stumbled to the gate entrance. He moved towards the bone horn hung by the gate, but I leaned far out from the plinth and plucked the horn from its hook. Threw it into the clouds.
Then I grabbed at his robe. My fingers struck a hard surface beneath. Bone armor? He took two steps back and stared at me, at the platform, as we slowly moved past him. His mouth hung open, but he made no sound. His eyes looked like Moc’s. Stunned. Drugged.
“That’s the artifex,” Ciel said, “who takes the heartbone from us and makes the floats.”
Above, the bone outcropping loomed. We were going to run right into it. We needed to move. But we had too much drag to push ourselves sideways with only the windbeaters’ foils.
“Quick, the guard.” Ciel convinced another fledge wobbling in a half-drugged haze to help her shove the bound guard from the plinth down to the tier. He landed with a thump at the artifex’s feet.
We began to move faster. Now we had more maneuverability, but less time to get away from the outcropping. Ciel and I pushed hard on the wings until we rowed ourselves downwind of the hazard. Ciel sat back on the platform, relieved, but I felt the danger more now.
Floating this way, we moved higher without having to circle on the wind or rely on a gust. But morning was coming. Soon Dix or her guards would return and find us creeping up the Spire on her stolen platform. We needed horizontal momentum too.
I shook the nearest fledges, pointed. “Best if we could go straight across the gap between the towers, to Bissel.” Across the open sky. “We have to row really hard. All together.”
“I have a better idea,” Ciel said. “But you’re not going to like it.” She handed me a rope that had been used to weave netting.
I held the spidersilk tether in my hands. So much stronger than the ropes Kirit and I had used in the Gyre a day before. Was it only a day? Two?
“You want me to pull the platform, on the wing?”
She smiled, relieved I understood, that I was taking her seriously. “Yes. And we’ll all row.” Behind her, Moc giggled, half drugged still. I was already tying the tether around my waist.
“It’s going to be unsteady.” In the best of all worlds, that was all it would be. Worst possibility, the platform would drag too much, I would lose my glide, fall, and pull a section of the plinth down with me, dumping the drugged fledges into the air.
“If you don’t, they’ll catch us,” she said. “Come on.” She pushed two fledges towards the extra windbeaters’ wings, then picked up her wing again. It was easily twice her size. Moc, seeing what she was doing, wrapped his hands around the frame too. He helped her lift the foils, still caught in the stupor of the heartbone-rendering Dix had given them to eat.
“Flap,” Ciel said, her voice barely above a whisper. Then again. The fledges began to fan the air with the wings, in time with her voice. “Flap.” The platform edged away from the Spire agonizingly slowly. It would be light soon.
Don’t let me fall and kill us all, I whispered to the wind, to myself.
I tied myself to the forward husk, letting the tether line play out across the platform until it was twice my body-length long. Was that enough lead? It would have to be. Behind me, Moc watched, dully. “If I fall, you untie this line.” I pointed to the knot I’d tied.
Moc nodded. He understood. I hoped he’d move fast enough.
“Hold on, everyone,” I said, then ran the platform’s length, the fabric sinking beneath my feet, and leapt into the air, aiming for Bissel.
A breeze caught my wings and filled them. I lifted and felt the tether play out, then, for a moment, pull taut. It worked! I towed the platform behind me for a moment, until it wallowed and tugged me back. My wings guttered. I was falling. I struggled to stay aloft.
Another gust filled my wings and I rose slightly. Looking below my wings, I saw the wide spans of the windbeater foils pulling hard at the air on each side of the plinth, in time with a whispered beat.
Slowly, our platform lurched across the sky.