The Place
Skyspire Footholds is a ring of sheer cliffs on the edge of a high country, and the cliffs are the whole of the city, because there is nothing else to build. The faces of the cliffs rise two hundred meters from the valley floor, and the two hundred meters is the distance between the wind that lives and the wind that kills, and the line between them is where the platforms stand. The stone is grey and vertical, a grey that does not change with the weather, and the platforms are lashed planking, pale timber bound with sinew and rope, set on the ledges one at a time, because a ledge is a year and a year is a generation. Between the platforms the rope-bridges swing, the bridges are wide enough for one, and the one is the law, and the swinging is the sound of the city, a slow creak that is the walk and the walk is the day. The wind-sacks hang from the outer platforms, woven and pale, and the sacks catch the wind and the catching is the lift, and the lift is how nothing here falls. The sky over the footholds is a hard blue, the color of the high country when the storm is far, and the light on the stone is bright and mean, the kind of light that shows every seam in a rope and every crack in a plank. It smells of rope-resin and cold stone, a smell that is the city and is also the warning, and the one sound under the creak is the chime, the low ring from the wind-chime huts that is the wind read as a word. There is no landmark the way a cliff has a landmark, but there is one: the First Platform, a single slab of lashed wood at the base of the ring, the lowest and the oldest, and the platform is the door, and the door is the climb. What makes Skyspire Footholds itself is the line: the city has no door, only a line, and the line is the sentence.
How They Live
The Air Goblins keep this place in the climb, living in hollow wind-chime huts — shells of carved stone that ring in every breeze, so the city is never silent and no one can approach without the air announcing them. A hut is set one ledge at a time, and a ledge is the season and a ledge is the calendar, and the ring of huts around the cliff face is the whole of the city's building, three hundred at the last count. Light comes from the sun, farmed in polished mirrors on the outer platforms, and the mirrors are the trade of the mirror-keepers, a trade that is the craft and the craft is the rank. Water is carried up by rope-pulleys from the springs below, and every bucket that goes up is a tax paid to the rope-weavers, and the weavers are the hands, and the hands are the law. Food comes from the high country: the wind-game, the cliff-moss, the seed-catchers on the outer ledges, and the salt the springs throw off, and the salt is the staple and the staple is the kept. Heat is the mirror in the season of the sun, and the sun is the season, and the goblins have stopped asking the wind for more. The defense is the climb — the footholds have no door, only a line, and the line can be cut from above, and the cutting is the whole of the defense, because a visitor who is climbing is a visitor who is already counted. The day is measured by the wind, and the wind is read by the chimes, which is also the alarm, which is also the calendar, and the calendar does not lie about the storm. Every child of the footholds must cross the First Bridge alone before the city will call it a climber, and the crossing is the naming, and the naming is the only thing the wind ever gives back.
People
Home of the Air Goblins, whose wind-clans are counted by platform. Three hundred huts at the last count, and the count is kept by the rope-weavers, which is to say the count is as reliable as the rope, which is to say it is reliable until it is cut. The wind-wards lead, and rank is decided by the reading, because a ward who reads the chime before the storm is the ward the city trusts. Nothing that cannot climb is welcome, and the not-climbing is not an insult, because the city has a line, and the line has a law, and the law has a swing. A surface trader who once stood at the base of the ring and looked up called it a city the wind had built with goblin hands, and the calling was the truest thing he said and the thing the city paid the least attention to.
In Stories
A city you cannot enter, only climb — and the climbing is the sentence. The Forgotten have passed the footholds twice, and the twice was on the way to the high country, and the climbing was not done by the six, and the not-doing was the decision. Uaellaen read the chimes from below once, and the reading was correct, and the correctness was the only thing that frightened him.