Cloudbound (44 page)

“It's going to get dark again soon,” Wik said. The sun was just grazing the bone range that disappeared into the clouds. When the sun passed above the clouds, it would seem like a second sunset. “We should find shelter.” He pointed at a flock of bone eaters that dipped their long necks and dug in the midden heaps with their beaks. One lifted a large chunk of flesh covered with feathers—the body of another bone eater—and flew it to the city's mouth. When it dropped the carrion, the city's tongue slowly emerged and dragged the morsel in.

They carry the dead away …

The song came unbidden, sounding almost giddy as I remembered it.

They eat the stars.

They crack the bones.

They feed the clouds below.

Bone eaters fed the city, not the clouds. Aliati and Djonn would love to know this. Moc too. I hoped to be able to tell them.

Far above, a cloud-hung meadow sheltered almost everyone I cared about. I shook my head to focus my thoughts and reeled, dizzy, with the motion.

Wik had a different worry. “We don't want one of those to surprise us and catch us, alive or dead.” The moment Wik said “or dead,” he looked like he wished he hadn't. Still, I couldn't have agreed more.

“Do you think that's what happened to the others? The guards?” Kirit said.

Who'd been near us in the sky? Dix, almost certainly. She was as close to the cloud base as I had been. I kept expecting to find her, or what was left of her, as we walked. “I saw several guards fall,” I said, seeing again the spinning sky, the plummeting wings.

“And Hiroli had Ciel. I hope they stayed above the cloud base,” Wik said. His forehead wrinkled as he frowned. “Maybe Ciel's all right.”

I thought back to the fall. I hadn't seen Wik or Kirit when I tumbled, nor before that, when I struggled with Dix. “How did you fall? You were both higher than me, chasing blackwings.”

Kirit laughed quietly. “We saw Dix attack you. We weren't going to leave you there. We were coming to help. Then the wind disappeared.”

They could have flown away and been free, but they hadn't. Now they were stuck here too.

With a sound like a swath of wet silk being pulled across bone, the city extended its tongue again near one of the bone eaters' offerings and pulled it close. When it opened its mouth, other bone eaters took wing, bringing more food.

The sound of the city digesting its meal was too much for us. We set out again, moving down an incline to another ravine, trying to get closer to where the bone ridge began, while staying far from the city's head.

The sun passed above the clouds. In the dim half-light, Wik tripped over a pile of refuse gathered along the city's neck.

This was more than trash and deadfalls from the towers above. Mud-covered, rusting metal, some of it pitted and filled with rainwater, had accumulated on the ridge. Some holes were big enough to bathe in. A long section of what looked like wall or balcony, made from mud-colored blocks, stuck from a pile of bird bones. The trash rose and fell with the city's breath.

From this height, we could still see shapes on the horizon; other cities, moving.

“How long do you think the city's sat here, letting the bone eaters feed it?”

“Too long,” Wik said. His gaze took in the depth of the trash, the height of the bone ridge. “I doubt it could move now, with the towers it supports being so high.”

The city rumbled, as if in reply. We could not keep our footing. Soot and dirt rained down on us from the towers above.

“This isn't safe,” I said when the rumbling stopped.

Wik agreed. “We need to go back up, now.” He pointed to the farthest spur of bone. “Maybe there's a way up over there.” Dark marks speckled a bone ridge in the distance, the height of which would eventually become the towers, the city. It looked more accessible than any ridge we'd seen yet.

Our landscape had altered from sky and tower to a geography of claw and tongue, joint and limb.

“I'm willing to walk there,” Kirit said. “Even if it takes a moon.” She began checking our weapons: four arrows left, and a bone knife. Two mostly repairable wingsets. One broken. Then she checked my wound.

“I dreamed about exploring the city, you know. About flying beyond the towers.” I hissed as she resecured my bandage. “I wanted to know more.”

“Dream smaller next time,” Wik said.

Kirit laughed. “Your curiosity has always been endless trouble, Nat.” Her teasing expression sobered. “Hold still if you want to be able to climb the ridge and get back to your family.”

I couldn't let myself hope for that. Not yet.

As Kirit worked, I stared at the city's flank. It had curled one foreleg over its shoulder. Claws extended like sideways towers across its skin. On one yellowed ridge, three dark figures moved. “Look!”

“Birds,” Kirit said.

“I don't think so.” The creatures didn't move like birds. I squinted, rubbed my eyes and looked again. Whatever it was walked in the opposite direction from the towers, away from the city. But the dark forms tugged at the edge of my vision.

“Let's take a look?” There was a ridge just below that would give us a better view.

A dust-filled crease, muddy from the rain, offered an easy, if twisting, path down.

Wik frowned. “We can't waste time here. The city needs us, and we have a long way to go.”

“The sooner we get back up, the sooner we know Elna is all right,” Kirit agreed. A flicker of pain crossed her face. “And everyone else.” She turned on the ball of her foot.

I knew they were right. More than anything, I wanted to see my family safe, and my city whole again. But when I made to follow Kirit towards the wall, I couldn't shake the vision of the dark figures walking away. Wik looked back too, now.

“Just a moment, to be sure,” I said. Wik finally agreed with a nod. Kirit followed us, grumbling, looking back over her shoulder towards the bone ridge.

Around a bend in the city's skin, we found the remains of two blackwings. One had died naturally, if a fall was natural. The other had a deep cut across her throat.

“Someone else is alive here,” Wik said. “Or was.” He went through their robes and took their weapons. Kirit shouldered a water sack. I took their packs and another mostly whole wingset. Pale and shaken, we ate their food: a gryphon one had shot down before she died. We drank their water.

Then we moved again, faster, towards where we'd last seen the shadow-figures. Overhead, a bone eater flapped its giant wings and circled away. Kirit shivered.

“My theory,” Kirit said as she watched the bird's shadow grow smaller on the ground, “is that, once we find out who is out there, if we get up high enough, we'll be able to launch ourselves into a decent gust. But we'll need to be very high. Possibly as high as the clouds.” She was still thinking of the climb, barely tolerating the ground.

We all looked back towards the city, tilting our heads to see the bone wall silhouetted against the thick clouds.

When we came out of the crease, we could see the city's leg much more clearly. The dark figures we'd watched before had moved, but not far. I shaded my eyes against the sunlight emerging from the other side of the clouds.

I could make out details on the distant figures now. Two wore wings, but they were half furled and cockeyed. One figure limped and carried something in their arms. The other figure walked beside them. Then sun hit them all just right, and I caught a glimpse of white wings in the arms of the limping figure, seemingly immaculate against the city's skin.

“Ciel,” I breathed. She lived. But someone was carrying the fledge away, towards the edge of the city and the dusty expanse beyond.

“We're going after her. Now,” I said. This time, Wik and Kirit matched my pace without argument. The climb had to wait.

*   *   *

In the gaining light, we left the shelter of the crease and moved as quickly as we could towards the city's shoulder. Before, when the sun had passed above the cloud, we'd closed some of the distance. Now we could see the black wings on the person carrying Ciel and the robes of their companion. The heat slowed us all. Those we pursued stumbled down the city's right shoulder, stopping to rest more often than we did.

We didn't stop for anything. Even when it began to rain momentarily as the sun appeared fully beneath the cloudline again, we kept going. An arc of color painted across the sky, something that would have captured our attention a week ago. Now we walked until it disappeared.

The city's dust became muddy and rain pooled in a dimple on the city's shoulder. The water smelled sour but tasted fine when Wik sipped it. We filled our water sacks. We walked on. The sun slipped lower, the rain stopped and the city began to steam. The stench grew. We kept going.

Ciel and those who carried her reached the bent elbow of the city. When they set her down on the ground, we saw her struggle and roll, her feet and hands bound.

“We're coming, Ciel,” Kirit said.

I'd never wished for wings and a fast breeze more. My ankles creaked, and my legs felt every step. And we were slow, painfully so. But we were gaining on Ciel's captor. We could see the way they bent and spoke to the fledge now, while Ciel knelt, sick, on the ground. When the sun struck the figure, the few beads left in their dark hair glittered. Hiroli. She waved her hands in the air over her head, yelling.

Ciel collapsed, and Hiroli grabbed her by the arm and dragged her.

The blackwing with them followed, limping.

Wik, Kirit, and I began to run, first in the heat and then in the cool of the next sunset, this one truly on the horizon. While we ran, our breath coming jagged, our feet bruised, the horizon changed color: purples, oranges, yellows. Eventually it faded, and we ran first through the dark, then by moonlight.

I could hear Wik's breathing, his dry cough getting worse. Kirit wheezed. I heard a rattle in my chest too. “We can't keep this up.” I'd run in the tiers sometimes, and on the meadow, but never this far.

“We have to,” Kirit said, each word costing her breath. “We can't lose Ciel.”

No. We couldn't lose her again. She would say she was brave, that she could fight. But she needed us.

“She's Spire-born; she was raised to fight,” Wik said. He'd been the one who wanted her to hide when Dix came, wanting her to be a child a little longer. Now he held on to a different kind of hope.

“We won't lose her,” I said.

By the time the sun rose again after the long night, and the city began to heat up, we were stumbling. Kirit's limp had become a drag. We could barely keep our heads up. Red sky and gold rays edged the city, slowly illuminating the claw and leg. The full stretch of gray, dust-speckled skin glowed in the sun, and nowhere did we see them now. Hiroli, Ciel, and the blackwings had disappeared in the night.

We searched the horizon. Nothing. Wik knelt, while Kirit lay on her back, staring at the clouds above. I tried to sit, but nearly toppled to my side. I braced myself on my arm while my leg muscles twitched from exertion.

Wik shared out the rest of the blackwing's food and water from his carry-sack. “We need to eat. And find more water. We'll die at this pace.” We huddled together as best we could, in the shadow of the bend in the city's leg.

When the sun finally rose above the clouds, we began to walk again in the direction we thought they'd gone, but when it passed again below the cloudline and heated the ground, Kirit sat down, dizzy. Though Wik convinced her to drink, she could go no farther that day.

I walked a short distance away to relieve myself, then returned as the shadows grew longer. Wik handed me the water sack and said, “I'll take first watch.” I drank the last sips of water and settled down to sleep and dreamed of falling, until the shouting woke me.

Kirit and Wik stood before our resting place, throwing trash at a dark-winged bone eater seemingly the size of the city's biggest claw. The creature bore down on them, its serrated beak clacking. Sunrise's orange glow silhouetted the bird's enormous wings and head.

Struggling to my feet, I raised my voice to join theirs. Then I charged at it, every muscle screaming pain. The bird startled as if nothing had ever run
at
it before. Bending its knees, it pushed its body into the sky as the sun began to set. We watched the bone eater disappear.

In the dimming light, the horizon looked flat and bleak. Far away, ripples that might be water, or might be heat, formed and disappeared, a hallucination. I saw no lights glinting, no smoke climbing into the sky. Wherever our ancestors had come from, they hadn't left anyone behind to greet us, or to help us.

A small mote appeared in the air, descending, its path erratic. It looked like one of the giant bugs we'd seen swooping the midden heaps around the city, but it was too high for that. Slowly it drew closer and resolved into a whipperling, trying to fly straight with a damaged wing, feathers askew. It spiraled to the ground just over the ridge. I hurried after it, hoping.

When I reached the bird, it lay on the ground, breast pulsing, trying to right itself, but its wing would no longer move. “Maalik?” I lifted his body gently in both hands. Weakly, he nipped at my finger.

Footsteps sounded behind me; a shadow covered my shoulder. “Look at his leg,” Wik said.

Tucked beneath Maalik's body, a silk cord. Two cracked and battered bone chips.

“How?” I looked up into the sky.

Wik followed my gaze. “If Aliati or Beliak sent Maalik once the meadow collapsed, he might have tried to follow us. Gotten caught in the fall?”

Maybe. I lifted the message chip. Beliak's sigil was cut into one side. My hand shook as I flipped the message over. “We are well. Guards are handled.”

That was all. A signal smuggled into the air. I stroked the bird's head and cupped my hand to hold water that Wik poured. Maalik dipped his beak in, head hanging over my palm. “He's exhausted.”