Cloudbound

 

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About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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for Tom and Iris

 

PART ONE

DISAPPEARED

 

Messenger birds launched as one flock from the council platform. Black bodies studded the blue sky in a cloud of purpose. Then each dusky beak pointed towards its home tower, each left leg carrying three new Laws.

The city's councilors watched them go. “Let this be enough.”

A junior councilor, still wearing her wingmarks proudly, murmured, “On their wings.”

The birds flew northwest from Naza, southeast to Bissel, and to all the towers between and beyond. They used the city's winds to ease their passage. They flew past tiers where families gathered, waiting for news. Where mourning flags flew, new madder-dyed silks fluttering among faded rose rags.

More than half the kaviks crossed the city's center, where the Spire, cracked and groaning in the wind, stood empty. Flaps and cackles broke the morning's eerie silence as the birds diverted around the walled tower, avoiding its gates, its gaping mouth.

The kaviks bore the bone chips tied with spidersilk thread at their black ankles as their ancestors had, curling their claws against the clatter of bone chips. They made no comment except for a curious tilt when recipients lifted the cords from their legs. A caw for food, which was often slow to come. Puffed feathers as they listened to the new Laws, and the altered Laws, whispered, then sung. Kaviks remembered the words. They remembered everything: the Laws of this generation, the Laws of those that came before.

GROWTH

No tower may use scourweed to elevate their tiers above any other. No citizen may possess or store it, stem or seed.

SPIRE (revised)

None enter the Spire, night or day, unless council-sworn or with council-say.

ESCORT (new)

No Singer-marked or Singer-sworn may fly between towers unguided. They will their host towers abide and be cared for without complaint or reprisal. Wings they may borrow, but may not own, lest the city be again divided.

 

1

CODEX

As children, we learned early that the clouds were dangerous.

Turns out the city wasn't all that much safer.

Between three towers, the council platform hung suspended, its thin profile on the horizon the only thing protecting the city from itself now. Councilors paced, barely visible at this distance, preparing for their morning votes, while I peered at them through sharp cracks in the Spire wall. I wanted to be out there, in the open sky, leading. Making Laws, rediscovering our past, keeping tower from fighting tower. Not here, accompanying Kirit Skyshouter on a cloudtouched expedition into the Spire's remains.

But Kirit and I dangled from tenuous ropes in the Spire's dim afternoon light anyway. We swung within the cracked walls and over the deep gaping center of the Spire because the council and my mentor, Doran Grigrit, had asked it of me.

“No one else can find the codex, Nat, and few want to go in the Spire as it is. She's offering to help,” he'd said on the council plinth earlier that morning. “The Singers knew how the city grows, why it roars. How the towers rise. We're on the verge of a new age, with new discoveries, but we need to retrieve as much knowledge from the past as we can, before the Spire cracks further and our opportunity is lost. None of the other Singers have been near as helpful in this effort, not since the new Laws. Take her in.”

And here we were.

I hummed a verse of a popular song.

The Spire cracked as a Shout rose up,

freed the city, freed us all.

“Knock it off, Nat. I'm trying to count tiers.” Her voice was rough, even when she spoke. The healers said it could stay that way forever.

“That's Councilor Densira to you, Skyshouter.”

These days, children sang of Kirit the hero. She was that. She was my wing-sister too, and would always be. But she had faults, and a stubborn streak, and her friends stood a fair chance of getting killed. I knew all about that. Worse, she'd been acting strangely in the past few moons, since the fever. Distant. Obstinate.