Chapter 248

Lanterns lit along the rim. The Flock awake, glider-cloaks on, nobody sleeping. Svala perched on a fence post, very quiet since the Arena, Rougeina sitting on the grass below her and not asking. Vigolas holding his lantern too tight again. Tärna at the top of the Wing-Keep, bone whistle at her lips, waiting.

From every side of the dark at once, forty whistles. Every one of them Tärna's call. Every one of them perfect. No crack.

whistling back: the old rough note with the crack in it, fighting forty flawless copies. The birds under the island torn between them, the island bucking like a boat in a cross-sea.

on the Upp Igen's Perch below the rim, scope up, a crimson tear.

The island lurching; everyone on it thrown flat; birds snarled in the mesh beneath the cliffs, screaming. Tärna knocked off her stool on the Wing-Keep, still whistling from the floor.

The drum on the Gilded Cage, far below: BOM · BOM · BOM. Throw-nets coming down over the rim on the third beat. Flock families netted in clusters along the edge. Fowler kite-riders dropping onto the meadow everywhere, hooked poles out.

The battle in the strings.

Vigolas, the lanterns round him knocked out one by one by Fowler poles, the dark closing in. One panel of him frozen, afraid, breathing. Then the next panel: going in anyway, Emerald Knuckle, KRAKOOM, a kite-rider flying off the rim.

Smurjan and Kali, back to back, the black-glass sickle cutting nets off a Flock family. Bakasura rising and eating a whole throw-net in one bite. BAKASURA: "…Stringy."

Öde mowing nets in long even sweeps, grass springing up under her boots on the bucking meadow.

Ysel slicing knots three at a time.

Levla, who owns nothing and can't fight, carrying two Flock children under each arm into a nest-house and going back for more.

Svala, perched on a nest-house roof, aiming at a net with a whole Flock family in it.

tsiiip — SHHK — the net's anchor-line parts and the family drops onto the grass. Svala slamming into the next roof, clinging to it, gasping. Her third line of the night. Shorter of breath every time.

laying the Upp Igen's old anchor-cable out round the Flock's smallest children in one walk, the ends meeting, tk. A Rope Ring. Nets landing on it anyway, because a net isn't an order. Emma dragging them off the children with her own hands.

in the thick of it, laughing hard, on purpose, bells flying: rose bubbles drifting over a dozen netted Flock children, nets sagging, plink plink plink, children wriggling free. She's the most dangerous thing on the field and every Fowler knows it.

Down below the rim, close in under the netted island, the Gilded Cage sliding up out of the dark, lanterns all along her birdcage masts. Grip on the bow, lines at her eyes, the white streak at her temple. Calling up, soft, perfectly audible.

lit by the Cage's lanterns: a brass laughing gull, beak open, and at its throat a little brass bell, the same as the six in Tihi's hair. Tihi, turning, mid-laugh, seeing it.

The laugh stopping halfway out of her. The rose bubbles in the air around her popping, one by one, p. p. p.

Completely still. Bells silent. The rose marks on her cheeks gone a dull grey-pink. Not crying. Not anything. Across the meadow, Krydog sees her face and goes white.

Every net that was sagging pulls taut again, the plinks running backwards, and the dozen Flock children who were wriggling free are caught again. When the laughing stops, a hold can close.

The Lace, thrown from the Cage's bow, settling over Tihi gently, almost kindly. She doesn't fight it. She doesn't move.

Krydog, charging across the meadow at the rim, and three net-captains throwing on the beat, and the nets closing round him standing. Held. He roars, and can't fall, and can't get up.

at the rim above the Cage, hand coming up, palm out.

not even turning round.

(Daniel's raised hand, holding, trembling, lowering. There's no judgement here. Only a net.)

inside her Rope Ring with twenty Flock children pressed round her knees, seeing Tihi hoisted down off the rim in the Lace. She can't leave the circle while it holds. Feet planted. Hands open.

on a roof, arm blazing, aimed at the Gilded Cage's bow.

(Svala, her whole body straining to launch, doesn't. Before. The crimson line dies on her arm. She screams instead, wordless, at the dark.)

The Gilded Cage drawing back into the ring of kites. On her deck, Tihi in the Lace, lifted into a gilt birdcage the size of a wardrobe and locked in. Grip raising the small gilt cage at her hip, the rose book in it still now, waiting, and smiling at it.

The net-captains hauling. Slowly, the whole Sky-Net, with Flyttfågeln hanging in it, starting to move through the dark, towed by forty kites. On the Wing-Keep, Tärna, netted to her stone stool, still whistling.

Rougeina and Bakasura have cut Krydog loose. He staggers down the chalk stair to his own ship, where Fowler boarders are swarming, and a last net-captain's pole takes him across the jaw beside the mainmast. Flat. WHUD.

A thin panel, a doubled silver pulse: ba-BUMP · ba-BUMP. Silver light through his torn bandages. Then the rise, one arc, no hands, coat flaring. HUP.

at the foot of the mainmast, its rope hanging. Silent.

one after another, noticing. Roffe, ladle lowered. Jeppson, hands shaking. Perne on the Perch. Flexsnus, tin halfway to his pocket.

standing beside the mainmast, healed, bandages hanging off his fists, raw-eyed, looking at the silent bell.

A flying island hanging in a net the size of the sky, towed through the starless dark by forty kites. Below it, two ships, lanterns lit, keeping pace. On the meadow, two crews and a Flock standing in the cut nets. And on the Upp Igen's deck, a bell that nobody rings.