Aerie (19 page)

Are you supposed to have to work this hard?

Vespers comes out of my chest and gives me a look that tells me this bat would never trust me to sing the stars across the sky with her.

I'm crying, but crying doesn't help me sing any kind of joy. Crying only makes me worse. And it only makes me think about how much I miss the days when I knew nothing about Magonia, when I was safe on earth, when I knew that people loved me—

Never mind that I was dying back then.

Never mind that some of the anger I have lurking in my throat, fucking up my song, dates to fifteen years of dying out loud.

Never mind that. Never mind the whole truth, this giant mess that I've been trying to turn into a less complicated story, a story in which no one died so I could live, in which no one's life got stolen, and no one's destined singing partner forcibly controlled her voice, and no one's mother was a psychopath, and no one's only totally trusted person lied to her.

Never mind that I understand the reasons for all of it. Never mind that I get it. Never mind that I know what's wrong with me. It doesn't make anything less painful, knowing its origin.

I'm still angry, and it comes out every time I open my mouth. The birds look at me, and Vespers looks at me, and the Flock looks at me, and for a second I just want to give up on all of this and roll off the deck, down through layers of icy air, and into the ocean. Maybe a frozen version of me can be brought back in a hundred years, and maybe then there won't be fury hiding in every note I sing.

That might be what it takes to erase seventeen angry years from my song, a full reboot. I already had one of those, though, and here I still am, stewing and fucked up.

“Again,” the Flock says.

And again, singing drills, until I'm gasping, until I'm singing notes I've never sung before, but they're all still full of wrong.

Finally, after hours, Vespers sings . . .

Well, Vespers sings vespers. Or an equivalent. An evening prayer anyway. Some kind of prayer. To no one. To everyone.

Starlight
, she sings, and I'm pretty sure she's about to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” which would be ridiculous but would also kind of make me happy.

Instead, though, she just sings a lullaby that brings all the birds in the sky into full voice, a flood of rapture, all the birds
rising up, and then falling through the air. All of them singing snow as I shut my eyes, exhausted.

The last thing I feel is the Flock picking me up off the deck and carrying me to my cabin. And I feel, for a moment, totally safe.

“Wait,” I say.

The Flock pauses in the doorway, Caladrius on his shoulder.

“You sang with her?” I ask. “I just want to know what it was like. No one's ever told me what her voice actually
sounded
like. I never heard it. Or, at least, I don't remember it. I was tiny when I was taken from her ship. I only remember being on earth. They put me with the drowners, in a skin, and they left me there.”

I'm telling him more than I should, probably, more than is wise. Does he hate drowners? I don't know. He looks at me and I can't tell at all what he's thinking. His face is troubled.

“I did sing with her,” he says, and sighs. “A long time ago. She had a voice like no one else in the sky back then.”

“And you don't?”

“I do. There was a reason we were well-met,” he says. “I was on
Amina Pennarum
. I was a cabin boy. Assigned to scrubbing, mainly, every plank, feeding the sail, untangling ropes, and mending nets. She was lower even than I was, the cook's girl, and so she saw the hunger firsthand. She was in the galley, watching provisions come into our ship from below, seeing things broken by the ground, and stretching our stores to feed the ship, until, one day, she stood on the deck and sang out in frustration. She created a wave of wind and storm to tear the corn up from a field below us and bring it onto the ship. The drowners, she said, were polluting the crops, ruining the feed, spraying it with
things that poisoned insects, eagles, Magonians. She knelt in the corn she'd stolen and cried. Her voice was so powerful that the captain, Ley Fol, noticed her. I noticed her too.”

I jolt. Ley Fol is the pirate Zal made walk the plank last year. She's also the Magonian who sent me to earth when Zal was punished, when her chest was sealed so that she would never again sing with a heartbird. I have a history with Ley Fol myself. She's the reason I had a life at all. She was ordered to kill me, and instead she saved me.

The Flock smiles, but his smile is sad. Now Vespers is in the cabin, hanging from the top of the invisible ceiling, stretching her tiny silver wings. I can't even imagine this version of Zal, my age, younger? Or of the Flock, for that matter. He seems ancient.

“What happened, though?”

“She was a wonder of the sky,” he says. “She sang, and I sang with her. She rose. I rose alongside her. Eventually, she took over the ship. She became the captain, but being the captain of a single ship did not make the forage better on the ground. Singing the songs she sang did not keep her crew fed, and the capital had strict regulations about forage, and how it was managed. Her anger and frustration grew. Her first and most powerful songs were songs of destruction. Those were the ones she sang naturally. The rest, she sang with effort, and practice, but they were never the easy songs for her. She made enemies in the sky, singing those songs, but they were the ones that seemed they could change everything, at least to her. At last she returned to them, singing without a partner, using only her heartbird—”

“Caru?” I ask.

He looks even more troubled with the mention of Caru's name.

“She used him to sing songs no heartbird should sing. No bird at all should sing those songs. That is what I know now. I did not know it then.”

“She was punished,” I say.

“I know she was,” he says, and winces, his own hand over his heart. “But she was not always so made of night. She could sing creation songs too. For a time, long ago, Zal Quel was the light of the sky. There was a time, but that time is done. She made a choice, and her choice was destruction. Her choice was to flood.”

“Why?” I ask.

He doesn't answer me. He just strokes the heartbird on his shoulder, his face furrowed.

“Because she knew how. I made choices of my own. As will you,” he says. “As does everything living, everything singing, everything in wind and weather. Sleep now, singer. There will be another morning.”

“I hope so,” I mumble.

“There will be,” he says, and he pats me awkwardly on the head. “Caladrius sings of it already, and Vespers too. All the birds in this sky have been around the earth and seen tomorrow, and we will see it too.”

“Is that a lullaby?” I ask.

“It's only the truth,” he says.

His golden eyes shine as he leaves my room, Vespers singing a soft song of stars and constellations, Caladrius singing with her, and finally the Flock joining in, all three singing with one bright voice.

I fall asleep hearing their voices wrapping around the ship, a song of crackling ice and singing whales, a song of birds riding
the wind and the ocean washing itself into brilliant frozen waves, each one of them full of the voice of the sea, and of the songs Vespers sings from the radio, a combination of love songs and temperatures, all of it merged into one thing, the voice of the world.

I careen my drone back in the direction I think it came from,
boomeranging it toward whomever sent it at us.

That would be Zal and Dai, and wherever they are, Caru is. That's what I'm hoping. Guessing.

I've pulled up its origin coordinates, and that's where I send it, steering it through a vortex of wind currents, and weirdnesses. It makes sense to me on some level, these flight simulation video game–style controls. The drone is showing me video as I move it through the sky.

I can see warships. None of them look major, there's nothing that seems to be Zal. And none of them are moving. They're just . . . waiting for something.

It occurs to me that maybe they're waiting for Aza to show up. Maybe they're waiting for her to be unable to stand it. Or they're waiting for someone to bring her back. Maybe she's already been captured somewhere else in the sky and that's why she didn't answer when I called and—

Stop.

There's a lurch and my drone spins furiously in the currents, flips upside down, and flies backward for a moment. I
see other drones, flying fast in the opposite direction of mine, a high-pitched clicking sound. My drone swerves upward in a draft, and down, and then barrel rolls, and another drone passes, beeping.

Now, through drone camera eyes, I can see the vague edges of Maganwetar, the nothingness that is its camouflage, and the definitions of its WHERE—all guarded from every angle. Nothing else would need so many guards.

But. What does it mean that the drone came from Maganwetar?

A wall of whirlwinds, surrounded by lightning-f stormsharks, their teeth bared, their bodies made of sparks and dark. There's a humming of song all around it. High above the blankness, I see a ring of additional drones, hovering in the sky, protecting the perimeter. These drones are bigger than the archaeopteryx I'm piloting, their wings flapping slowly, mechanized, their toothy beaks open. These are the size of eagles, their black feathers a serrated edge of metallic gleam. There's a halo of them hovering over Maganwetar.

Why the hell are they there? They should be with Zal.

How many drones did SWAB send up here? Or did Zal somehow manage to gain access to drones from elsewhere in the sky? There are at least fifty of them, and they are wing to wing, the blades at the tip of each wing making a fence of barbed wire to keep out anything that might be coming toward the invisible capital city.

Maganwetar is powerful. There's more to it than just a mass of invisible ships and invisible buildings. The capital of Magonia is full of magic, but it seems like I can't see anything coming out of it. The ships are quiet. The city is quiet. The sky,
despite all the guards, is quiet.

There's no ship guarding it precisely, no ship I can pin down as the one they're on.

Where is Zal Quel? Where's Dai? Where, most importantly, is Caru?

Magic and science. The drones are from earth, but the song they're singing is the heartbeat of Aza's song turned into something evil and destructive, twisted into something that could turn solid to liquid, rock to water, flesh to blood. Destruction.

Zal's song, in other words. That's all I can think, hearing it twisting around the city. Which means she must be—

And then.

I see it.

The faint tops of the buildings, a glassy city. It looks like the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, an ice palace, a Disney version of splendor.

There are towers shaped like birds, and towers shaped like phoenixes, towers shaped like airkraken. Creatures from the sea and sky converge into the shapes of the city of Maganwetar, and all the buildings seem to move, swaying gently in the wind. I can't see any people from here, and no guards either, beyond the stormsharks and the little flotilla of drones.

It blinks in and out of visibility. The city seems to be sailing with a fleet of manta rays as sails, and
ray
is an accurate word, as in sun's rays. These are sending out rays of dark, not light. I can see their huge wings moving, and there must be thousands of them. They fold the city up in a cloak of wings, and then unfold it. I see the city flicker in and out of view.

My jaw drops.
These
are what keep Maganwetar invisible. Not some kind of tech. These.

The city itself, from below? It must be . . .

I think about weather reports I've seen over the years, about the way storms move across water, pulling up strength, the way they soar until they make landfall.

Maganwetar is a superstorm. It's a destroyer. Even with all this beauty inside it. It's concealed by weather, and for now, the weather is dormant.

I don't want to be around when it's not.

I see the manta's chains, dark as their wings. They're lifting all of Maganwetar, and carrying it through the sky.

Enslaved. And the same thing that Zal's been using to sail her ship. Which means—

I send my drone in closer, propelling it through the edges of buildings, and into Maganwetar.

Then I'm staggering. Eli's beside me, looking at the screen of my phone where my drone's footage is showing me what the city has been hiding from us, camouflaging with manta rays and storm clouds.

“Wow,” she says.

That's all there is to say. The city is teeming with Magonians in uniform, thousands of blue people in all kinds of uniforms, all of them the colors of the sky at night and morning, their hair twisting ropes. They're armed to the teeth. They have swords and axes, ropes, knives. All the things I've seen in SWAB's archives are up here in reality. I've seen Magonians before. Aza, Dai, Zal, a glimpse back in Svalbard of the
Amina Pennarum
crew, but this is different.

“That's an army,” Eli says.

I follow the drone's passage over the buildings, looking
through its eyes, searching for Dai, thinking he's what we're going to arrive at.

Finally, finally, the drone banks on an air current over a tower, and I look down through its camera. It's back to its original coordinates.

Its original coordinates are Zal Quel.

I'm looking down on her from above. She's commanding the city, like she'd command a ship. I can see her bent over a giant sky chart, and she's pointing and gesturing to Magonians.

And I see what's attached to Zal.

Caru. Caru, being used like bait on a fishing line. He's flying above the city, attached to a chain, and screaming. I can't hear his song, but I know what he's singing. It's pleading. It's
help
.

It's like I'm seeing Aza's heart chained to someone else. It's like I'm seeing all of my nightmares about her not loving me anymore, except in the form of her heartbird stolen from her, taken against her will.

I have a clear shot. There's nothing to decide.

“Go,” says Eli. “Do it.” I can feel her supporting me as I instruct my drone. I'm hardly standing, and she's holding me up. I can't think about it. I'm so barely here.

I see Zal looking up from below, but my drone is there, ready. I waver, waver, and the city beneath me is shaking and my hands are shaking, and I target through the sight just as I see Zal point at the drone. Other drones come spinning fast right at mine, but it's too late—

I press the button and deploy my drone's explosive.

Not at her—no, though I want to—but at the chain holding Caru to her, and to Maganwetar.

Maximum strength, right at the chain. There's a huge burst of light, and my drone lurches, attacked by other drones, just as I lurch too. I'm slammed into by someone, and then grabbed, someone leaping over the edge of this ship, off a launch and into the Rostrae nest ship.

Across from me, Eli's getting grabbed too.

Within moments, both of us are tied and shoved into the bottom of a fast launch boat, screaming and fury all around us.

I look up and see Dai looking down at me.