Cloudbound (13 page)

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.