Cloudbound (37 page)

At the third tower's wall, Moc studied a mottled indentation carefully. He gestured to Ciel, and she pressed her fingers along the marks.

“If the towers are Naza and Varu, we've traveled far vertically, but barely moved across the city.” Maalik would have a long way to climb, and then fly.

At the tower wall, Ciel let out a surprised cry. Water spilled down bone somewhere nearby. Rain again? I didn't see any dark clouds on the horizon. Then came the sound of bone grinding against bone.

“A windgate!” Ciel said.

A panel in the tower wall slid open as a hidden cache of water released. The tower rumbled and shook like the whole thing was about to come down. “Get back!” I shouted, forgetting the map. I ran to pull the twins from the bonefall and wound up holding Moc by the armpits. Only one tower in the city above had windgates still, and it was cracked and dying. Was this the Spire?

“Let me go!” Moc squirmed, all elbows and knees, ignoring the risk, and I dropped him on the lichen. “We were only looking! See! It's shaped like the entrance to our cave, but much deeper.”

Ciel pointed and I looked back at the entrance to our own shelter. Even from here, I could see mottling around the opening. Carvings I'd thought were decorative. “But our gate must have been stuck open for a long time,” she said.

The opening gate before us revealed a cave similar to that of our own shelter as well. I relaxed a little. The twins climbed back up on the bonefall.

“What do you see?” Ceetcee called, catching up with us. Her breath came heavy. “It's so overgrown here. So green.”

My hunter blues stuck out against the shades of green, gray, and ocher, but the bottom of Ceetcee's fern-stained yellow robes had begun to blend in with the towers. All around us, the bone was draped with green patina, rimes of moss and lichen layered over generations. Moss darkened ridges where bone core overgrowth had folded itself into lumps and bulges. The air was thick with green here too, and we could breathe so much easier. But the rich smells were overwhelming. Ceetcee held her nose, but kept going.

We climbed the bonefall as the twins crawled into the cave. “I see wingsets,” Ciel said. “And weapons. All along the tunnel.” Her voice receded as she followed Moc. I scrambled after them.

“I'll get the others,” Ceetcee said. Then she paused, one foot on the bonefall. “Unless you don't want everyone to know?”

“Maybe for now.” Secrets tended to break groups apart. We'd learned that from the Singers, from the council. But Hiroli had been keeping secrets too. Ceetcee remained by the windgate.

This tunnel was longer than our entire cave, and filled with spiderwebs. As Moc had said, several shallow alcoves lined the path. Moc stood in one, examining a stash of bone arrows and spears.

“Good find,” I whispered, beckoning him back.

“Look!” Ciel pulled us to another alcove and pointed at a broken double slab of bone held tight by a large bone screw atop it. “What's this?”

I shook my head. No idea. “That's a loom, though.” The bone loom, bigger than any we had in the city, was cracked and pushed on its side up against the wall. “These were made here,” I said. “Too big to carry up.” But with what tools?

The wingsets Ciel found were in decent shape. The silk had rotted away, but the wingframes were intact, and very basic. No controls. No fine-tuned batten structure. Only simple geometries. Ciel pulled one away and peered behind it. Coughed. “More bones.” She backed from the alcove, pushing me into Moc, who'd come running from behind, trying to catch up.

“Nat, a codex!” he held a rectangle made of something soft and thick, not bone. It crumbled in his hands. Not silk either. The rotting rectangle was folded into the basic shape of a codex, but held nothing inside. “There are lots of them,” Moc added. He'd found more bone piles in the tunnel as well. But these bones hid nothing but dust. No injuries. No hints about who they'd been or why they'd died.

I shook my head. “It makes no sense. They were living down here. Making things. And then they were gone, and everything's piled in this tunnel.” I toyed with the screw on the double slab of bone, the break in the slabs too straight to be accidental. Ciel pried the slabs apart to reveal a bit of brass plate pressed into thick dust.

She stared at it, understanding dawning. “Djonn figured out the lighter-than-air process by doing the reverse of the plate drawings,” she said. Her eyes lit up. “He thought it was a code.” She grew more excited. “He wasn't backwards. The plate was. Watch. He'll love this.”

Everyone in the tunnel looked up from what they were exploring. The littlemouths' light wavered at the sound of Moc's voice. “Why does that matter?”

Instead of explaining, Ciel took a small bone jar of blacking from her satchel and smeared the plate with it. She scooped the piece of brass from the slab, wiped most of the blacking off, and flipped one side of her robe upside down so that the paler, cleaner side showed. Mashing the plate onto her robe, she pressed down hard. When she lifted the plate, all I saw was a mess on Ceetcee's robe. Then I noticed that the small imprint looked almost readable. At least the symbols were flipped a familiar direction.

Moc understood first. “They could share guides for building things without memorizing songs or lugging carvings around. Sometimes the best way to fight is to teach.”

“Maybe once that was true, but something happened.” I gestured to the broken slab. In the dim tunnel, the walls seemed to crawl with shadows.

“Ugh, spiders,” Moc said.

It was damp in the tunnel, but spiders should have scattered when we opened the gate.

Ciel hummed until the littlemouth on my shoulder glowed again. There weren't any bugs. The walls of this tunnel were also covered with carvings. Angles, like Aliati had made on the map to trace the fledges' flight paths. A picture of a scope. A perfect circle.

“People might have lived here for generations,” I said, looking at the interplay of carvings, but thinking of what Ciel said. Most of the symbols were unreadable, but a few, if reversed, almost looked familiar. One resembled the tower sigil for “tradition,” upside down.

“It's like someone tried to start a city below,” Ciel whispered. “I like it here.”

“Was Corwin's Thieves before or after The Rise?” I asked, still studying the carvings: men and women weaving, holding up sheets with more symbols on them. Though she was still young, Ciel had learned Singer ballads for many years, while all I'd had was a few moons' study with Tobiat.

“Much later, I think.”

“So maybe,” I mused, sensing Moc's impatience, “some people didn't rise with the Singers. Maybe some stayed here and didn't fight tower against tower. Maybe they kept artifexing.…”

Moc picked up my train of thought. “Maybe there were differences over how to live.” He put aside several arrows and pushed a bow away from the wall. His finger traced the carvings to the cave mouth, ending at a place where several figures were dug out with deep hatch marks.

I drew a calming breath. We'd seen similar in the littlemouth cave. The reversed symbols. The interwoven marks. The erasures. Perhaps once there had been a difference in how to live. Perhaps not everyone had agreed. Tower versus tower war, in this perfect cloudbound meadow? I hoped not.

But one thing was clear.
We were one people once, not Spire and Tower. We understood many things. Then we came apart.

“Let's keep going,” Ciel said. “Coming, Ceetcee?” she shouted down the tunnel.

Ceetcee hesitated at the windgate. “You go ahead if you must. If there's a collapse, someone will need to go for help.” She kept her voice light, but I knew she was uncomfortable.

Her caution gave me pause, but the twins were already running ahead.

“Slow down. There could be bone eaters or worse.”
If they got hurt on my watch, I couldn't forgive myself.
Ciel paused, eyes wide. The littlemouth's glow stayed with us as Moc moved farther away. “Moc!” Darkness closed around him, and silence.

That fledge never listened. Ciel and I chased after him.

The tunnel ended in a black gap that echoed empty and wide. I smelled old bone, dust, and dampness now. We'd walked deeper into this tower than we had in the previous one, and the gap would have alarmed Ceetcee.

But when we emerged from the tunnel, I knew a bone void wasn't the danger. This tower
was
dying, without a doubt, but it wasn't from natural causes.

I had a better guess where we were now. And it was neither Naza, nor Varu.

Ciel and I stepped into the dim light; Moc stared up in gape-jawed amazement.

We stood on a narrow ledge that ran nearly the tower's full circumference. After the ledge, there was nothing but dust-filled air, lit by the littlemouths on our shoulders. Above us, for as far as we could see, black-shadowed galleries rose until they disappeared.

“Ciel,” Moc said, turning to see that she too stared up, stunned.

His voice startled the walls. A flight of bats peeled away and went screeching and wheeling up the tower's center.

I'd fallen deep into that void once—although nowhere near this deep.

I'd climbed into its ruins and tried to steal its secrets. Now Ciel turned a slow circle, taking in the carvings, the empty void, but not understanding.

Moc whispered again. “Ciel, we're home.”

We'd found the Gyre's edge, deep in the Spire's depths.

And from back down the tunnel, we could hear Ceetcee calling our names.

The bats disappeared into the tower's upper reaches. Ciel moved slowly, reaching out a hand to touch the carved walls. Bone had spread into deep cuts and erased lighter marks, but outlines were still visible. Her hand came away white with bone dust, reversed, blurred imprints of the same symbols and marks from the littlemouth cave, interspersed, higher up, with a few marks much more familiar.

I saw, too, carvings of people working in our meadow. They bent over strange mechanisms; unfurled familiar—if simpler—wings. They wove a plinth between the towers, just as I'd imagined. But the carvings stopped well before the symbols.

By the time Singer script appeared on the walls, the carvings were entirely gone.

Ciel touched each one, whispering their names for me, “Knife. Wing. Challenge. Arrow.”

“You see how they once all worked together?” I said, pointing at the meadow, the carvings. “And how it ceased?”

Behind us, cold air expanded, and the dim light from above disappeared entirely. Ciel's littlemouth pulsed, alarmed.

A crash echoed down the Gyre. I searched the darkness for bone eaters. Instead, an enormous piece of rotten netting drifted down, followed by shards of bone from above.

Ceetcee had been right to worry, even if she'd been wrong about the tower's name. “The Spire's too unstable. We have to go.”

I pulled Ciel away from the wall and pushed her towards the tunnel. Dragged Moc with us as more bone continued to fall. We scrambled back through the tunnel, Ceetcee's shadow growing visible as we drew closer. She was sheltering within the tight space of the windgate. Outside the gate, rain fell again, big drops by the sound of it, landing on the meadow. A chill blew through the open gate. “This isn't Naza,” I said, thinking how she and Aliati would have to change their maps, wondering what else we might find in the towers.

Ceetcee ignored my news, turning from the gate and pointing at the sky. “Nat! Look!”

Though the sky had darkened and a cold wind blew across the meadow, the sounds weren't from rain at all. High above, winged shadows passed overhead.

Message chips dropped to the meadow floor, bound in ones and twos.

 

29

PROMISE

“They've found us.” I skidded down the bonefall, causing a small collapse. “They're coming!” We'd need arrows and spears. Those were in the cave I'd just left. I scrambled back up.

Ceetcee tugged at my sleeve, drawing me back from the cave entrance. “Wait. They could be strewing the chips everywhere near where we disappeared. They don't know how far down we are or where, exactly, any more than we do.” That was true. She'd made her best guess with the map, but I knew she'd guessed wrong.

Moc climbed the ridge wall and peered over the side, into the depths. “They're falling out there too. Ceetcee's right. They don't know where we are yet.” Ciel trailed him, picking up chips and throwing them, furious.

I fished a message strand from the branch of a fern. The three white bone chips strung from a blue silk cord hung small and vivid against the dusky green and deep brown branch. The marks on them read
REWARD FOR TRAITORS
, for those who might seek us, and
YOUR CRIMES WON'T BE WEIGHED WITH THEIRS
, to those among the cloudbound who might return to the city without prejudice—Doran, Hiroli, Aliati, and Djonn. Both groups might turn us over to the blackwings.
SURRENDER
was aimed at the rest of us.

Across the meadow, chips gleamed white from where they'd fallen in the vegetation, looking like skyblind eyes. Most were Lawsmarkers with the sigils for Treason and War.

Even if we hadn't been discovered yet, the blackwings were too close. We would be found. Did we need to flee again or to make a stand? I didn't know yet.

Kirit would want to fight. Wik and the twins too. Hiroli would flee. With my family here, I wanted to do both: run and fight.

We sped back across the meadow, ignoring the nettle stings. At the other side, Aliati, Doran, and Hiroli stood looking up.

Hiroli held several chips in her hands. She absently ran her thumb over one.

“Come on,” I said as we passed them. “We've got to go.”

Aliati took Ceetcee's arm and helped her up to the ledge. She'd tucked one of the markers behind her wingstrap. None of the rest of us even had our wings on yet. She was preparing too.