Updraft (21 page)

Singers returned and took their posts around the rim of the Spire, ready to go out again to the towers if the city was not appeased. They stood still as carvings, resolute. Wrapped in their duty, though their eyes glistened with tears and wind.

With a shock, I realized that they hated what they did. And yet they did it. Wik stood among them, eyes red.

They waited.

We waited with them.

We stood until night fell, until the gray shapes outlined against the lingering dusk blocked out the stars in the sky.

The crafters and councilors waited. I saw Councilman Vant standing near a ladder, but he did not see me. He scratched his nose and blinked in the cold wind.

Sellis's stomach growled.

This was another part of Conclave I had not known. We marked the emptiness left by the cloudbound with the pain in our stomachs.

Around the Spire, the towers kept silent too.

By dawn, the Singers who had pressed hands and ears to the Spire throughout the night stood. The city's rumbles had ceased.

By noon, we were weak from standing in the wind and our stomach pangs had turned to birds' claws, scraping against our ribs. Moc and Ciel were ashen shadows of themselves. They leaned against the woman who'd sung the Conclave.

Someone passed around a water sack. We each took a single sip. The water tasted sour.

By evening, the city had not roared again. A Singer ascended from below. “The Enclosed are satisfied. The city is appeased.”

Rumul and his companion sang the final notes of Conclave wordlessly, marking the passing of the cloudbound, the release of their trespasses from their towers.

As he sang, we looked up to mark their passage, rather than down, to mark their fall.

Then Sellis nudged me with her elbow and jerked her chin towards the ladder. Other Singers had already begun the climb. We were allowed to descend.

*   *   *

Sellis moved quickly down the rope ladder, then to the carved steps of the lower tiers. She was eager for food and bed. I ducked into an alcove, still shivering from the fast and the cold of Conclave, and with more than that.

Rumul entered the alcove at last and saw me waiting for him.

“You are out of place, Kirit.”

Always, Rumul.
And yet? “I have questions.” I spoke softly, with respect. Tried to still my shaking from the cold, from the ritual.

“You should ask Sellis. Or Wik, when his duties allow.”

“I would ask you.”
Slowly, Kirit.
I had watched Wik avoid challenging Rumul's authority. Now I tried to do the same. Sellis and Wik had not prepared me for Conclave. There was more I needed to know now, rather than
soon.

A novitiate brought a shallow basin of rainwater and handed it to Rumul. The young man waited while Rumul dipped his fingers and rubbed at his face. Then the Singer dismissed him with a wave.

I was allowed to stay.

Rumul raised his eyebrows and made a reeling gesture with his hand. I saw his challenge tattoo, faded now, but still visible. A symbol I'd recently learned to carve. A knife.

“Who gives the Singers the right to murder people?” The words had come faster than I'd intended.

He sighed. “How do you not number yourself among the murderers today, Kirit?” His voice was not smooth, not sweet. It was tired and rough.

“What?”

“You attended the Conclave. I saw you.”

I waited, not understanding. I'd thrown no one down.

“Did you try to stop it? Did you offer yourself in place of the old man from Viit?”

I had not. My first thought had been to stay as far from the edge as possible.

Rumul continued. “We're all guilty of wanting to stay alive. To do so, we must at times appease the city. The city would destroy us all without it.”

“You say so, but I didn't see the city throw those people down.”

He reddened. “Your decision, then, is to join them?”

It was not. “I want to know why.”

He wiped his dripping face with his robe. “Kirit, there is no more sacred duty than that of a Singer. We keep the city whole. We make sure its traditions are not forgotten. That its people do not throw everything to the clouds. To do so, we listen to the city, appease it, and enforce its rules. Do you understand?”

I felt hunger stretch its wings in my stomach. Thought of how Singers taught the Magisters, who then taught us histories, Laws. “If you maintain traditions, why are songs different inside the Spire?”

“You have seen how people revile us, fear us? Even as they respect us?”

“Yes.” Remembered long pauses after the word
Singer
came up in tower conversation.

“Can you guess why we might change the words of our history?”

His eyes glittered in the lamplight. I was being tested. How much of my Singer training had sunk in?

Continue arguing,
his eyes seemed to say.
Or prove you deserve the opportunity you've been given.
I cleared my throat. “The songs Singers learn are more frightening. The towers don't suffer as much of our past because they have forgotten. So they don't fear each other.”

He inclined his head. “Such as?”

“The clouds. What the time before the Rise was really like.”

“War. Horror. The things citizens did to their towermates, to their neighbors, Kirit. The city needed to heal, to come together again, once we rose out of it.”

In my mind's eye, I saw the scenes I had learned to sing. Tower by tower, the horrors. “We learn different verses so that we may keep it from happening, without making the rest of the city eager for revenge.”

I realized this for truth as I spoke it. The Singers had done this. They had saved the city in more ways than one.

And Conclave—when I lived in the towers, it was used to frighten stubborn children to action. As we grew, we learned that it was a way for the city to release the burden of broken Laws. A way to redeem the offenders.

Now that I had seen what actually happened, I could not hold my tongue. “What kind of people do this to one another?”

He bristled. I'd pushed too far. I saw anger in his eyes. Then he blinked and took a breath. His voice grew softer.

“The city demands much of us in return for shelter. Long ago, we learned to tend it in ways that you already consider barbaric. Very well.” Rumul looked at me, both hands held out, palms up. “It is the trial of the Singers to do this. If we ignore the city, we fall. If citizens begin to fight, if we lose our traditions, we fall. The towers crack. Would you go back through the clouds? So many died, coming up. The city may rise with or without us, Kirit. The tiers will fill in with bone and push us out. To live, we must rise too. To rise, we must appease our home when it grows angry with us.”

“Haven't you tried to appease it any other way?” I thought of Nat, growing up without Naton.

“Yes.” The way he said it, I knew he believed it. But he continued. “We've lost four towers, all on the outer edge. Broken. Lith was only the most recent to fall. So many people have died, Kirit. Thousands, all at once.”

My mouth formed an O, but no sound came out.

Rumul looked up at the ceiling of his alcove, which was carved with stars. “That is the sacred trust of the Singers.”

I shook my head slowly. “And what do we get in return?”

“Life.” He spread his hands like wings.

I thought of what I now knew. I thought of Wik's eyes at Conclave.

“And what of people like Nat's father? Naton?”

I could see he recognized the name, was trying to remember why. I saw the memory rise behind his eyes. His mouth hardened to a line. “He broke Laws, Kirit.”

“No one who knew him thinks he would do that. What Laws?”

“Laws within the Spire. He had a great trust from us, and he betrayed it.”

“What trust? What did he do?” I could not stop myself, though Rumul's look grew more inscrutable. “I want to know the truth!”

Rumul came to my side and gripped my arm. “Then I will tell you,” he said, his voice softer than it was before. The honeyed voice. “Naton was a friend. A brilliant bridge artifex. He knew more about the Spire than most citizens ever will. Naton…” He paused. His voice was very sad now. Sad and soft. “Colluded with a disgraced Singer to bring information out of the Spire. It began innocently enough. He saw something during the course of his work; he was curious. But in the end, this curiosity became dangerous. He had learned things that others in the city would pay well for. Knowledge that would have allowed others huge advantages over the rest of the city.”

Knowing Nat's own curiosity, I could believe his father had been curious too. But selling out the Singers? I didn't believe it. What was Rumul telling me?

“To whom did he betray you? What was it?”

Rumul turned to look at me.

“Nothing more glorious than being on wing at Allsuns, is there? And Allmoons.”

I began to nod. Then I realized the latter for a trap. He had turned his attention back to me. I closed my mouth tight.

He chuckled. “You're learning.”

“No one is allowed to fly on Allmoons.”

He raised a finger. “No citizens fly at Allmoons.” He said it as if he held a greater secret behind his lips. I wanted to draw it out, and I didn't want to know.

“The Singers fly at night?” I pictured myself and Nat at Allmoons. We'd felt we alone owned the sky. We hadn't known. Nat would have loved knowing. And then I realized.

“This is what Naton found out.”

Rumul paused and smiled. Then he took a breath and continued. “Some Singers fly at night. An important skill, especially for those who can control the skymouths.”

“How is that possible? Nat and I—” I cut myself off, to avoid thinking about Nat. “How do you see the wind? The towers? How do you not collide and fall?” I stopped and thought. “The skymouths?”

He held up a finger.
Patience
. “It is a skill you have yet to learn.”

I was distracted. Now that I knew Naton's treason against the city, that he'd found out the Singers fly at night, I wanted to know more about how they flew. But for Nat's memory, I chased the last shreds of the secret down. The bone chips Tobiat had given to us had notes etched on the backs, in what I now knew to be Singer notations. Maybe they held the secret to night flying. And we'd had them in our hands the whole time.

“Who was Naton going to tell?”

Rumul shrugged. “We learned he had betrayed us shortly before the last Conclave. He hadn't yet shared what he knew with his contact, but it was a trader.”

“But he never told?”

“He was caught before he could pass the information on. We caught his colluder afterwards, but the notes he'd made were lost in the confusion of Conclave.”

“How did you learn about the betrayal?”

Rumul grew still again. Then sighed. “My first acolyte, on his excursion. He discovered the treason.” He paced the length of his room, to the hammock, and returned to his workbench. Sat down with a reluctant frown.

Treason.

“The acolyte had taken up with a young, ambitious trader. Naton had told her already that he had information he wanted to sell. She was gathering the markers to pay him. Our Singer kept her from making the mistake of meeting him and turned Naton in.” He looked at me significantly.

I drew the truth together in my head, saw it as a whole. The trader, young and ambitious—and who wouldn't be faster at trading if they could fly at night when no one else could?

Ezarit. Naton had intended to give what he knew to Ezarit.

Oh, Ezarit.… Kept from breaking Laws by her … lover. Rumul's acolyte. My father. My father had betrayed Naton, and kept Ezarit safe, and helped the Singers keep their secrets.
No.

Rumul read my conclusions in my expression. “You see it now.”

I did—and if my stomach hadn't been emptier than the sky before a migration, I might have been sick with it. But the memory of the secret Naton died for tugged at me.

They flew at night. Singers flew at night. And Ezarit had wanted to know how.

Two questions fought in my mind. They raced from my mouth.

“What happened to my father? And how do you do it? Flying in the dark, when you cannot see?”

Rumul smiled. His voice smoothed even more. “You will learn, if you choose. Sellis is training.”

He was silent, waiting on my answer. I knew danger still lingered. Rumul's hold on the Spire was stronger than any councilman's. And I suspected Sellis would not be overjoyed to have me along on her training. But this—what a thing to know. And what power to have.

“I wish to learn this,” I finally said. “I am ready to learn it.”

“You think so? You can understand why it is necessary to keep the Singers' secrets? You understand why our duties, and the ones you saw at Conclave, are necessary?”

My thoughts returned to the Conclave's horrors. I recoiled against the expected answer.
There must be other ways.
Things untried. Then I remembered Lith's dark, cracked form. I considered how to make myself more secure, so that I did not become an offering myself.

I would silence my questions about Conclave. This was what Rumul asked of me. To keep Singer secrets, to help the city.

“Yes.” I was determined.

“No going back, Kirit. Accepting this skill means accepting all of what the Singers do. Going deeper into our secrets. Including what you saw during Conclave. When the time comes, you will fight all comers to protect the secrets of the Spire.”

“I will never throw down Elna or Ezarit.”

He agreed. “As long as you hew to Singer law, we will not need to hurt Ezarit.” He paused. “Or Elna.”

There it was. My trade. Not what I had planned at all when Nat and I flew through the night. I'd come then to take what was already mine. Now I agreed not just to serve the Spire, but to become it.