Above World (9 page)

The sea spread out to the horizon, seemingly endless. As vast as the ocean had always seemed, he’d never seen this much of it at once. If they flew high enough, could he see around the entire world? Trees, mountains, birds, clouds . . . his eyes couldn’t take it all in fast enough.

He should have been planning their escape. He should have been trying to wake Aluna or negotiate with their captors. At the very least, he should have been panicked or frozen with fear.

But as the Above World sprawled out below him, all he could do was stare.

A
LUNA’S THROAT BURNED
. Something was on top of her, crushing her cheek against a web of coarse ropes. And, as if that weren’t enough, she was adrift in a choppy current.

No, wait. It wasn’t water buffeting her skin, but air.

She opened her eyes.

The world swam below her, all blue ocean and trees and chiseled gray rocks. She wanted to scream, but her throat hurt too much. She was in a net — mashed under Hoku and his bag — dozens of meters above the ground. She twisted her head to see what was holding the net and caught sight of wing tips.

Hoku’s words came back to her:
sharks in the sky.
Her brothers had spoken about the Aviars often, usually speculating about who would win in a fight. Even underwater, the bird-people’s warrior skills and tactics were renowned.

The net surged upward and the landscape changed. The trees dotting the mountainside were replaced by row after row of black squares tilted toward the sky. Hundreds of them hugged the ground, obscuring the natural contours of the rock. They sparkled like waves in the sunlight.

“What are they?” came Hoku’s voice in her ear. She tried to whisper back, but her throat refused to function. She tried again, and a third time, until it obeyed.

“Hoku,” she said. “Are . . . ?” She swallowed, closed her eyes, tried again. “Are you okay?”

“Aluna!” came his voice. She wished she could see his face. “I’m fine,” he whispered. “The Aviars captured us —”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yes! They came with a net — oh. Ha ha.”

She smiled. Above them, the Aviars’ wings whooshed as they continued to rise. She felt pressure building in the back of her head and the dull throb of an oncoming headache.

“You know what you did,” Hoku said in his serious voice. “You can’t go back to the ocean now.”

“I know.”

“Then . . . why did you do it?” Hoku asked.

She could hear his real question, unspoken but loud as waves crashing in her mind:
Why did you leave me?

Staring into that Deepfell’s eyes, those glossy black bubbles, it had felt so right. Deepfell came from the same ancestors as the Kampii. They changed their bodies more drastically, but they still had the same capacity to love and hate, the same right to live. Most Kampii called them demons, forgetting that three generations ago, it was a group of Kampii hunters that initiated the first raid. Daphine knew. As the city’s Voice, she had urged tolerance and tried to negotiate a peace treaty. No one ever listened. Not the Kampii, not the Deepfell, and not even Aluna.

But seeing that Deepfell’s pain and fear, his helplessness . . . she imagined she was seeing Makina’s last minutes. Would her friend’s panic have been any different? Aluna couldn’t bear the thought of letting a Deepfell, a
person,
die when she had the chance to save him.

“I had to,” she said. That was all the answer she had. “I’ll find another necklace, or some other way to go back. HydroTek will have the answers. This is just one more reason to find it.” She wished she felt as brave and confident as she sounded. “Besides, we have other things to worry about right now, like the Aviars.”

“They’re going to question us,” he said. “And I think eating us is under consideration, too.”

She answered brightly, trying to ignore the growing pain in her skull. “See? That’s definitely a more immediate problem.”

One of the Aviars shifted, and the net spun slightly. Their captors were headed for a small tunnel carved into the mountain. She didn’t think they’d all fit — two winged women carrying a couple of Kampii in a net took up a lot of space. But the opening seemed to get bigger and bigger the closer they came. By the time they arrived at the passage, Aluna was convinced that Big Blue himself could have swum right through.

The tunnel curved up and down and around. They left the warmth of the sun, and Aluna’s eyes instantly adjusted to the dark. Glow stripes had been painted along the tunnel’s stone walls, no doubt to help the Aviars navigate if they came home at night. Maybe they’d been so excited to give themselves wings, that they’d forgotten to give themselves dark sight. The Aviars swooped down and up one last time, and then they plunged back into the sun.

Aluna gasped. It looked as if someone had scooped a huge bowl out of the mountaintop. They emerged halfway up the side. Aluna could see tunnels and caves carved into the walls, making it look as pockmarked and pitted as the coral in the City of Shifting Tides. She imagined a network of passages and family nests and secret meeting rooms, like the ones the Kampii had back home.

In the center of the bowl, a huge tower jutted hundreds of meters into the air. Aviars flew in and out of the spire’s countless windows and perched on the resting sticks integrated into the architecture.

The City of Shifting Tides was probably as big, but you could never see all of it at once through the murkiness of the water. In the clean, crisp air of the mountain, she could make out details for kilometers in every direction. The flurry of brightly colored wings and a constant breeze made the whole place feel perched on the edge of chaos.

She heard Hoku suck in his breath. She imagined him trying to look in every direction at once, his eyes wide. She didn’t blame him.

“Hoku,” she whispered.

“Yes?”

“Do you think they’ll let us explore before they eat us?”

He chuckled. “They’ll need more than wings and pointy spears to stop us.”

Aluna watched a blue-winged Aviar fly straight up and out of the colony’s open roof.

“Did you see the pulleys?” Hoku said. “Over there, where the water runs down the wall. They can lift things from the ground all the way to the sky! I wonder where they get the power.”

Aluna wasn’t entirely sure what a pulley was, but she loved the way the water fell from the edge, splashed hundreds of meters down the side of the bowl, and pooled in a glistening circle around the center spire. A variety of four-legged animals stood drinking from its edges.

The Aviars carrying them flew toward the central building. The pain in Aluna’s head pulsed with each wing flap. She shut her eyes and swallowed, trying not to be sick. In the ocean you had to be careful how fast you went up to the surface or back down to the city. Was the same true for the sky?

She kept her mouth shut as the Aviar flew into one of the tower’s wider windows and dropped the net to the floor. Hoku’s bag slammed into her shoulder, followed by Hoku himself. She yelped, more from the pounding in her head than from their weight.

Winged women with spears surrounded them and yanked them to their feet. Aluna gasped again. Without her breathing shell, she just couldn’t get enough air.

“Welcome to Skyfeather’s Landing,” a tall Aviar said. “You are in the Palace of Wings, and I am High Senator Electra.” She stood like a leader, relaxed and strong at the same time. The gold bands wrapped around her muscled arms were more elaborate than the bands the other Aviars wore. Her brown-and-tan feathers reminded Aluna of the hawks that flew over the coral reef, but her face was much like a Kampii’s. If she’d had a tail instead of wings, she could have been one of the Elders.

“Quickly, are either of you feeling ill?” High Senator Electra asked.

Aluna ground her teeth together and refused to answer.
Never let your opponent see your weaknesses,
Anadar always said. Usually right before he knocked the weapon out of her hands.

“Answer me!” the Aviar yelled.

Aluna clutched her head from the pain. Black spots swam in her eyes. Anadar would be so disappointed.

“Fetch a breather,” Electra said to one of the Aviars. Then to Aluna she said, “Listen to me carefully. You have sky sickness. The air here is thin, and your body is not adjusting. You need more oxygen.”

Aluna could hear her words, but only partially understand them. The whole world felt blurry, like the moon when viewed from beneath the waves. She breathed faster, but her lungs never seemed satisfied.

An Aviar with white feathers covered in symbols spoke. “I’m sorry, High Senator. We rose too quickly. I wasn’t thinking.”

“No, you weren’t,” Electra said. “We’ll discuss it later.”

“Help her,” Hoku said. Even through her haze, Aluna could hear the panic in his voice. Why was he worried? “You did this to her. You have to save her!”

With a rustle of wings, the Aviar who had been sent for the breather returned. A moment later, High Senator Electra shoved something into Aluna’s mouth. She tried to resist, but her body felt heavy, as if her arms were filled with sand instead of muscle. The artifact was the size of a clam and covered in tubes and blinking lights. It emitted a low hum that she found strangely soothing.

“Breathe through the device,” the high senator said.

Aluna shook her head and tried to spit the machine out of her mouth. Another hand grabbed her arm. A smaller one. She looked over and saw freckles.

“Do it, Aluna,” Hoku said quietly. “If you don’t trust them, at least trust me.”

She inhaled. Air rushed into her body. The invisible hand crushing her chest released its grip slightly. She breathed again, and again.

“Good,” Electra said. “Now I’m going to stick something to your skin. Do not pull it off. It will instruct your body to adapt faster to the altitude.”

“How?” Hoku asked.

“There are messengers in our blood that carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. We will tell the girl’s body to make more messengers.”

High Senator Electra gripped Aluna’s shoulder and clipped something to her earlobe. It stung, but no more so than pricking a finger on a sea urchin. She disliked earrings, but then again, the City of Shifting Tides didn’t have any that could save your life.

Her headache receded. She fisted her hand, relieved to feel its strength returning.

“The worst has passed,” Electra said. “Continue using the breather until you can do twenty push-ups without straining.”

Aluna had no idea what a push-up was, but she understood all the same.
Keep it on until you’re ready to fight.

The Aviar whistled and four guards stepped forward, their spears clutched at their sides.

“Escort our guests to their chambers on the prison level,” Electra said. She turned to Aluna and Hoku. “I have saved you, but only for now. I will inform Her Royal Greatness, President Iolanthe, of your presence. It is she who will decide whether you ever leave this place alive.”

A
LUNA’S PRISON CELL
had walls of stone and a door of metal bars. She wrapped her hands around two of the bars and shook them once, then again, then again with all her strength. Nothing. No sign of weakness. She leaned forward and rested her forehead against the coolness of the metal.

“I can’t see you,” she whispered to Hoku.

“No,” he said quickly, “but we can still talk. And we don’t even have to yell. The artifacts in our ears still work up here.”

“Unless they separate us,” she said. “This place is huge.”

She released her grip on the bars and turned around to survey her new home. The room was small, but still bigger than her nest at the colony. The pile of rags in the corner was probably her bed. She walked to the other corner and lifted a small hatch. It hid a hole and, farther down, some running water. The smell tipped her off as to its use.

“I don’t even have a window,” she whispered to Hoku. “I would have liked to watch them flying.” Hoku didn’t respond, so she kept talking. “And this is supposed to be a palace? If these prison cells are any indication, it isn’t a very nice one.”

Still nothing.

“Hoku?”