“Eat,” Wik’s guard said, pushing graincakes into the fledges’ hands. “We’ll find Kirit. We’ll make a search plan.” Although her name didn’t come to mind just then, the guard’s smile was familiar from Mondarath’s post-wingfight celebrations; her brusque orders something I’d heard at wingtest and while fighting alongside her at Spirefall. Her guard-short haircut was new—softly curling dark hair pulled back in a cap—and her usually brassish-red skin was wind-chapped bright pink from many days patrolling the sky. She’d stuck a metal loop through her left earlobe.
Ezarit caught my quizzical look. “I asked Aliati to guard Wik, given everything that’s been happening, and because he was kind to Kirit when she was ill. You should feel comfortable speaking before her.” A senior councilor’s prerogative, and a kindness, but Ezarit’s words hinted that there was someone she didn’t feel comfortable speaking around.
The fledges told Aliati and Ezarit, Beliak and Wik about the fall, the net. The Spire. They described falling from the sky with increasing panic, the shock of their experience wearing them thin.
Aliati handed me a graincake. “You’ll all feel better once you’ve eaten. Then you can tell us everything.”
“We are telling everything. Stop coddling me.” Aliati might be Wik’s guard on this tier, but she didn’t know everything. I felt more agitated as Beliak’s words struck home. You missed council. You never miss council! And we were about to set out again, at first light. They’d been looking for us.
That’s what the city was supposed to do: take care of its people. Beliak helped me shrug from my wings. Took my damp cloak and wrapped me in his. I began to shake in the warmth.
At Wik’s feet lay a silk game board, dyed like the one Doran had showed us. “They call that Justice at Grigrit,” Moc said.
“Different names all over,” Aliati said. “Same game. On Bissel, they call it Balance.”
She pulled a handful of tower marks from her pocket and dropped them on the square. “I don’t play, but the board is a useful map.” The marks clicked softly as they landed and knocked together. “Ciel flew from Grigrit to see the council, right? You were headed to Bissel. The way the winds have been lately, your most likely routes were here and here.” She placed two markers and used message cords to connect them to Grigrit.
She turned to each fledge in turn and asked them where they’d been going. Eked the information out of them, through their panic. Each time a child named a flight path, Aliati placed a piece of silk cord between tower markers. She let me help. I could work and gather my thoughts at the same time.
The area on the map between Bissel, Naza, Harut, and Grigrit in the southwest grew congested with markers and silk, the Spire at the center.
Aliati withdrew a metal tool from her robe, round at the top, straight at the bottom. I’d never seen anything like it before. With one finger on a ghost-thin mark in the metal, Aliati placed the straight edge by Bissel’s marker. She stuck her tongue out, thinking, as she turned the metal on the silk square. “This is a guess, but I’ve been measuring my dive angles for wingfights lately. Found I can judge where I’ll end up pretty well. You said you dropped twenty tiers?”
“Close to. Where did you get that metal?” Mondarath wouldn’t have much like it, nor Bissel.
“Had it since I was young. Found it a couple of Allsuns before the wingtest, before I moved to Mondarath.” She sounded as if she’d answered that question a lot. Then she refocused on the map. “We’d planned to search for you here.” She touched the marker nearest Grigrit with her finger. “But we’ll search closer to Bissel now for Kirit.”
She stood, brushing dust from her robes. Lifted her wingstraps to her shoulders.
“Who will go with you?” Ezarit said.
“I’ll go alone. I’ll tether to Bissel. I won’t get lost.” The confidence with which she spoke implied she’d done so before. “We can send for more guards once the sun is up.”
“Wait,” I said. “There’s more you need to know.”
Secrets and horrors piled up, all trying to emerge first from my mouth. The windbeaters’ foils and the reversed wind. The alcove with the fires and boiling heartbone. The drug that wasn’t muzz. The voices in the clouds and the skymouth husks. I didn’t want to sound skytouched. I wanted them to believe me. To act.
In council, Doran would appeal to what they understood first and build consensus, so I tried that. “Things are happening in the southwest. Unrest, anger. The wind disappearing.” Beliak and Aliati exchanged worried looks. I pressed on. “Even little things. Grigrit has little food for its Singers. While here?” I gestured at a basket near the fledges.
Towers in the city varied in height and trappings according to many factors, but the lowest tiers in each tower were all similar in their poverties. The cold, narrow tiers were nearest the clouds’ dangers and subject to all manner of abuse—intentional and not—from above. But this tier looked clean and dry. A cook fire was banked near the core and the sleeping partition blocked the worst of the winds.
Aliati followed my eyes. “It’s not Mondarath, but Bissel has decent supplies, and is generous with them.” She frowned. “Grigrit? Doran’s already decided that the Singers must appease the city. Why bother feeding them?”
She was right. I’d wanted Doran’s guidance to learn how to work with city council politics, but even I’d noticed he’d taken a course of action on the Singers well before the vote. I’d seen and chosen not to understand. Now I twisted the silk cord still on my wrist tight, angry with myself for being so obtuse.
I drank more water. Aliati let me have my fill, then handed me another graincake. I held on to it and wet my lips with my tongue. “Worse, Dix, possibly others, are using the wind—or lack of it—to pull fledges from the sky. To make them work in the clouds.”
“Could that be a natural phenomenon?” Aliati frowned. “Some kind of wind shadow?”
“A fledge-dream. A bone-dust nightmare. You’d been sifting Spire rubble the day before.” Beliak looked from the graincake to Aliati as if wanting her to say, “Eat,” again.
“Not all of us at once.” I was angry no one would take our word. Beliak was trying to look supportive, nodding when I spoke, but confusion shadowed his gaze, and worry too, as if he was wondering whether I’d gone skytouched, and what that meant for him and for Ceetcee.
If it was this hard to convince him, Aliati, and Ezarit, it would be impossible to convince the council.
“You could have hit your heads on something,” Aliati said. “There’s plenty down there that’s dangerous.”
“That doesn’t explain why they fell, though,” Beliak said. I swallowed a bite of graincake. As I chewed, I rolled what Aliati said over in my mind.
“You’ve been below the clouds?”
She nodded.
The connection lit up. The metal tool. Her ease with going alone beneath the clouds. I’ll tether to Bissel. I won’t get lost, she’d said.
“You’re a scavenger?”
Aliati regarded me, unflinching. “Was. Yes. It was a way to stay alive, before I lived at Mondarath, before I became a guard here.”
I couldn’t abide scavengers. But I’d flown with Aliati. I’d cheered her team during wingfights. The council had made her a guard. I struggled to match this new information to what I knew about her. Decided I could tolerate it, for now, if she’d listen to me, believe me.
Ciel brought me the bucket from the platform. The smell proceeded her.
“What is that?” Beliak asked.
Wik stood, ashen-faced, his tattoos nearly pulsing at his temples. “Heartbone. Where did you get it?”
We told them. The more we described, the less they understood. But we had their attention now. Wik seemed to believe us. Ezarit too.
“Where is this platform now? You’re sure it was supported by skymouth husks?” Ezarit paced, sounding concerned. When we told her we’d had to let it go in order to climb to the tier, she frowned. “Where was the tapping happening?”
“How far downtower are we?” I still didn’t have my bearings, beyond knowing I was on Bissel.
“Lowest tier, sixteen down. Northwest,” said Wik.
“The wind disappeared,” Moc said slowly. “Not like a wind shadow. Worse. Like a downdraft in the Gyre. I fell twenty tiers. More.” His voice was filled with disbelief—he was coming out of his stupor, but he hadn’t been aware enough to remember the mechanism above the plinth.
His twin came to help him, chin high, ready to argue with adults if she had to. “There’s an artifex down there, at least one. They made a whirlwind.” She spread her hands wide and spun them in the air.
Aliati shook her head. “That’s not possible.”
Wik agreed. “Downdrafts require windbeaters and height and windgates, like in the Spire. Nothing that can create one in the open sky.”
Moc bristled. “It’s true.” He pointed at the wingfoils we’d managed to salvage from the platform. “It happened.”
“Not even Singers could stop the wind,” Wik continued. A dark cloud crossed his face. “But…” He tilted his head, tired. Worried. “It might be nothing. Before Spirefall, towers were beginning to seek ways to direct vents as Singers did. Looking to speed gliding between towers. They’d asked the Spire for help, for a windbeater or two, but hadn’t received any.”
Aliati stared at the map. “Channeling wind is easier than making it disappear.”
“I saw what they used. I didn’t understand how it worked, but I saw it. Like windbeaters’ wings, but on a spindle. They made the fledges turn it.”
Ciel backed me up. “This is what happened.”
“Can you draw it?” Beliak held out a bone tablet and a piece of charcoal, but Ciel knelt in the dust instead. She drew the mechanism. “They used it to get more fledges. Pulled them right from the sky. Like they knew where we were.”
Like they knew when they’d be flying past.
“Nat?” Ezarit stared at me like a hawk. I’d made a noise in surprise.
“Doran had asked Kirit when we’d be leaving Grigrit, and where we were headed. We were bringing the codex—”
I stopped. The codex. My hands went to the satchel I’d carried through the clouds. It was light. The flap was loose. No. Not like the arrows. I said a windprayer and opened the bag.
One bone page and several cracked pieces remained where once there were four hard-won codex pages.
My mouth tasted sour as I lifted the remaining page from the satchel. It weighed what a large gosling would, and was as awkward to hold. The left side was drilled for a binding. Marks scored both sides, carefully carved in Singer script.
Wik whispered, “Conclave.” He peered into Kirit’s satchel, searching for more. Tugged a brass plate loose from the lining. His finger tapped the metal but didn’t pull it from Kirit’s bag. “Where are the rest? Where did you find this?” He whispered so low I suspected that Aliati couldn’t hear. But I could, and Moc. Ciel too.
“In the Spire.”
He closed the satchel tightly. “Singer lore only hints about metal plates, brought up from below, stolen by thieves. Dangerous myths. Best not to show those to anyone right now.” He meant before the vote.
More Singer secrets. This time, one I was carrying. “I don’t like secrets, Wik.”
He looked at me, green eyes set deep above his hawk nose. “Sometimes secrets are dangerous. Sometimes they keep people from harming one another.”
Ezarit lifted the Conclave page from my hands and flipped it over. The other side held transactions with nearby towers. “I can’t read much of this, but I see the time line.”
She could trace back Conclaves. The two before Spirefall. Then a long stretch of peace with one Conclave. Before that, a large one, with many marks. Her finger rested there. Below her finger lay a mark for my father. Even now, so many years later, I felt fear, anger. This codex page would not be the balm Kirit had hoped for with the council. Instead, it would fuel Doran’s drive for our own Conclave.
“We have to find another way to stop the vote,” I said. Looking up, I realized Ezarit might or might not know I’d been involved, but she would soon. “The vote for appeasing the city.”
She stared at me. “That vote happened yesterday. It passed.”
You missed council. You never miss council!
“Birds went out this morning,” Beliak said. “The towers are split. The city’s been rumbling for days.” He frowned. “This is what you were advocating for, not too long ago.” He said it gently, though we hadn’t talked about it ever at home. I’d obeyed Doran and kept my mouth shut. Not now, though.
“I was wrong.” We were, all of us, wrong.
Beliak let out a deep breath. “Much of the northwest is protesting. Sending messages. Organizing.” He looked about to say more, but stopped. Focused on Ciel’s dust-drawing again.
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?” I asked.
Beliak didn’t look up from the drawing. “Why didn’t you?”
I groaned. “I’ll fix this.” This was my doing, and Doran’s. We’d convinced the south and the east to vote for Doran’s proposal. “I’d hoped to tell the council what I’d learned from Kirit. To talk about how the Singers and fledges are faring now and how they’ve been punished enough, especially the ones who weren’t Singer leaders. I should have listened more, earlier.” How they were blamed for things they didn’t do. Now what? Would a protest make a difference?
“You’re not the only one, Nat,” Ezarit agreed. “Good people were swayed. I’d hoped Kirit would—that the codex would…” Her words trailed off. “But it may be too late now.”
It couldn’t be too late. “The city has enormous problems, and a Conclave isn’t going to solve most of them. Won’t Doran, of all people, understand that?”
“You’re Doran’s apprentice, you know how determined he is,” Ezarit began. “I couldn’t take you on myself, and you needed a strong guide.” Her words made sense, somewhat. The couldn’t still burned.
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” The words left my lips before I’d thought through their impact.
Ezarit winced. “It was politics, taking on Hiroli. A favor to Doran for keeping Kirit’s seat open. But I should have watched more carefully.”
I nodded. That made some sense.
She continued, “Doran’s vision for the future is powerful. But, Nat, you must understand, he can get caught up by his goals and lose sight of what’s important. He’s easily tripped up by his need for loyalty. I’d hoped you might help moderate him at some point, once you learned enough. Instead, we’ve been working at cross purposes for some time.”
“Doran’s good at maneuvering around dissent.” And instead of moderating him, I’d helped him maneuver. “Why didn’t you tell me?” But how could she have, without undermining a fellow councilor? Doran hadn’t been entirely wrong that action was necessary. “Your patience, your compromises won’t fix things quickly enough either. Not with the riots above the clouds; not with what is happening to the Spire below.”
She tapped her lips with a finger, thinking about what I’d said. “Maybe not. But I wanted to try, to give the city a chance to heal. The whole city. Kirit taught me that.”
Kirit. Her name kicked the wind from my chest. They were searching for her, I knew, but it didn’t matter. I’d lost her. “On the net, after we fell, she fought her way free and was gone. I didn’t go after her.” Gone, into the clouds, with a bad leg and a torn wing. On my watch.
She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be.
“She’d risk a fall in order to fight, yes.” Ezarit stared out at the clouds, her face unreadable. The balcony was quieter now that the fledges had lain down to sleep. “You’ll understand soon. There’s nothing you won’t do to protect your own.” She spoke to me and to Beliak now. “At his best, Doran’s that way too.” She chewed her words, thinking her ideas through before she spoke. “I regret what I said to you when you landed.”
“I’m sorry for not telling you about the vote.” A secret of my own. I’d kept things from Kirit too. I was not so much better than the Singers. And Ezarit—knowing now that she’d had plans for me, but had been waiting to tell me—that was the hardest secret of all. All for politics. Had it been worth it? What had we lost?
Ezarit frowned, speaking to everyone now. “It’s the secrecy that causes so many problems. Lining up game pieces—and allies—to win a vote or a point. We can’t move forward with a future bartered on secrets. And we cannot erase our past. We might as well ban singing.”
“Doran considered that.” The surprise on her face caught me off guard. “He decided it would be a ridiculous gesture,” I added. “We need the songs. All of them—even the lost ones.”
Wik, Aliati, and Beliak had stopped looking at the map to listen. Several fledges watched from the sleeping mats. Ezarit stepped back and included everyone in the tier when she spoke next.
“The Singers did many wrong things.” She looked at Wik, who nodded once. “But they kept the towers safe. They knew we lived on the knife’s edge here. Now we know it too. And there are different ideas for how to proceed. Different is not bad; it just takes longer.”
Her words were conciliatory. Doran’s had never been so. “I thought Doran a good mentor. A good leader. I wanted to do as he asked.” I couldn’t raise my eyes from my hands. I twisted the silk message cord into tighter knots.
“Councilor Densira,” Ezarit said with so much grace in her voice my breath caught, listening, “you were doing your duty for the council. I understand that you did your best in extraordinary circumstances.”
I looked at her then. My mother’s best friend. My second mother, if I was honest with myself. They’d made a family out of pieces left by tragedy. I’d hero-worshipped her from infancy, even as I fought with Kirit. I’d been jealous that she hadn’t chosen me to mentor. But she’d spoken words of understanding, while her daughter was missing and I wasn’t. This was leadership too. Grace in times of great pain. Attempts at compromise, when I suspected anger and fear for her family rippled beneath her breast. I hadn’t understood that you could feel both at the same time, not until recently.
Ezarit had always seemed as if she knew her path, and Kirit’s, a long rise, straight up. That path hadn’t seemed to include me, nor Elna, and I’d longed for that kind of direction. But families didn’t always work the way they looked, and they were complicated. Ezarit was family too, and Kirit. I’d not forgotten, but I’d been blinded to it by the turmoil in the city. By what I’d wanted for myself.
My family now was a complex construct, a web of sinew and bone, bridges and chasms. The missing were as important as those who had always been there, and those whom I’d grown close to over the past few Allmoons. We might rise, but we could also fall. Same as any family. Someone threatened family of mine? I’d take them down as far as they could go.
Ezarit spoke again, this time to everyone still awake in the tier. “The council is souring. The towers are close to turning on one another. We cannot lead the city the way we need to. We need to stop leading out of fear and anger.” She meant the vote. She meant me. “But we do need decisive action. On that point, Doran is correct, and I am prepared to act also.”
Was she advocating for Conclave? I must have looked shocked.
“We can never undo a Conclave,” Wik said, speaking my thoughts. The fledges watched Ezarit intently.
“I don’t want a Conclave,” she said. “I want the city to come together, and a Conclave provides only a false resolution. There are too many disturbances. The riots show there are many wounds left unhealed from Spirefall. We must address that directly.”
“But first,” Aliati said, “we need to stop the Conclave.” She touched Ezarit’s shoulder. “Get everyone looking for Kirit. Singers too. We’ll find her.”
Ezarit’s shoulders sagged.
“The protest tomorrow at the council plinth,” Beliak said. “I don’t think it will stop the Conclave, but some are hoping to try.” He looked guiltily at me, as if he’d kept a secret, or planned to join them. Then he said, “Ceetcee and Elna among them.”
The thought of Doran shouting at my family for interfering brought me to my feet. “They can’t. Elna’s too ill. Ceetcee could get hurt.”
“Elna’s frail, and skyblind,” Ezarit said. “But she wants to speak, and we should hear her. She’s taught me much over the years, and she’s stronger than you know. Ceetcee too.”
She was right, and I knew it.
Ezarit pointed to the bucket of heartbone and the fledges. “If we combine strategies, Nat, and add your proof of what’s happening beneath the clouds, we could stop this. We have to try.”
* * *
A kavik and a whipperling landed one after another on the balcony and chattered at us. Sunlight laid rainbows on the kavik’s deep black wings and mottled the whipperling. The bone chips at their ankles dragged on the tier floor.
Aliati bent to release the yellow silk cord from the whipperling’s claw. “Hiroli is bringing wings for the fledges,” she said, nodding at Ezarit. “Your apprentice is resourceful.” She lifted the next message chips from the kavik. The red cord dangled from her fingers as she groaned in alarm. “Guards are coming for the Singers. Soon.”
“Already?” Ezarit’s face fell. “They didn’t want to wait and risk more dissent.”
In the past, when Singers called for a Conclave, there had been little warning, and less resistance.
Beliak scratched a message on the chip’s flat side. “I’ll let Ceetcee and the protesters know.” He began to tie the message to the kavik’s leg.
“Use the whipperling,” Ezarit said. “Kaviks have been unreliable lately.” Her brow wrinkled. She was thinking hard. “I need to return to council. Let them know you have been found. Try—” She paused. Pressed her lips together. “When Hiroli brings the wings, you must hurry.”
The fledges gathered around her, but didn’t press. They watched her tighten her wingstraps. Within the furled silk, we could see the beak of the tea-dyed kestrel that marked her wings. Not a whipperling leader, after all.
She hugged Beliak and me. Pressed Wik’s tattooed hand between hers, and then put her arm around Ciel. “It will be all right. You’ll see.”
Then she turned from us and unfurled her wings. Leapt from the balcony and swept a strong gust around Bissel, north and east towards the council plinth.
When she was gone, the tier seemed smaller. Emptier. Wik and Beliak spoke softly to the fledges and looked at the map.
Aliati nudged me. “Let me see the plate that Wik found in your satchel,” Aliati said. “The one he doesn’t want anyone to see.”
“I thought you were going to look for Kirit.”
“I am. As soon as Hiroli arrives with the fledges’ wings and the guards come for Wik.”
I hoped Hiroli would hurry. That the guards would be slow. Opening the satchel, I pushed the codex page back to reveal the brass plate. Tilted it to the sunlight so that Aliati could see.
Across the tier, Wik rose from where he and Beliak studied the search map and started to protest. But then he quieted and knelt again, the Lawsmarkers rattling his shoulders. Beliak came over to us.
“I can’t read these symbols,” Aliati complained. “There are a few scavenger marks. This one says ‘trade’ but not what for.”
“I can’t read any of it,” I said. “Wik said to keep it hidden.”
Aliati frowned. “Do you think that’s a good idea? Singer secrets. We could tell Ezarit, tomorrow.”
I nodded. I couldn’t imagine what tomorrow would be like, if Conclave happened. What had I done? A lifetime ago. I wished I could go back and fix it all. That Kirit were here. She could stop them.
But they had me instead. And four fledges. We would have to stop the Conclave with the truth. No more secrets.
Three guards landed first. Two wearing hunter blue wings, with a net. One blackwing. The blackwing pulled a small bladder of muzz from his belt. Carried it to Wik.
“You drink that,” Wik said.
The blackwing held up his free hand, as if to strike the Singer.
“Leave it,” the first hunter said. “His choice.” They hauled Wik to his feet, scattering the map of flight paths.
“Let him go! Let him fly on his own!” Moc rushed the guards and tried to pry their fingers from his uncle’s arms. His face was fierce, but his eyes swam with tears.
The second hunter lifted Moc off his feet. “You’re that Singer fledge?” Moc’s Lawsmarkers rattled at his wrists. “Danger to tower?”
“Bring him too,” the blackwing said.
“No!” Beliak and I moved to pull Moc away, while Ciel and Aliati yelled at the guards, calling them monsters, skytouched. Worse than Singers. Fledges dragged at guards’ robes, their wings. Beliak landed a punch and was pushed to the ground.
“I’m a councilor!” I shouted. “Stop this.” But the guards bound Moc’s wrists and ankles with spidersilk. They tied Wik too. Made him climb into the net that all three guards dragged to the edge.
We shouted more, but the guards held us off. Even me. A councilor.
The blue-winged hunters leapt in tandem, pulling the net from the ledge behind them, and circling up, working the gusts hard until they flew level with the tier again. The blackwing attached Moc to a bone hook and strong-armed the struggling boy off the ledge with him.
Without another word, they were gone. Flying towards the council platform.
“I’ll follow them,” Beliak said. We raced to tighten his wingstraps. He met and held my eyes. “You’re back. You’ll stay? No more clouds?” He didn’t look worried that I was skytouched any longer. Instead, he looked worried that I’d disappear.
“No more clouds,” I said. Until I led the council to investigate Dix’s Treason, I could keep that promise. He gripped my arm, tight, then turned to the sky.
Time slowed as Beliak unfurled his wings and leapt from the tier. By the time he’d found a strong gust, the guards and their burdens were already black specks on the far horizon, disappearing fast.