Updraft (22 page)

He brought out a bone pot of caustic ink and marked my left hand himself, right there. A small spiral, a coil. Like wind in the Gyre. His fingers gripped my hand. The touch of his brush burned, and I bit my lip hard.

No further ceremony signaled my passage. With one mark, I became even more Singer-bound.

“When you are ready, you will challenge in the Gyre,” said Rumul. Just then, Sellis entered the alcove. She stopped and stared at us both, as if she'd caught us in an unwelcome secret.

Rumul smiled at her. “Kirit will learn how to fight in the Gyre. To fly at night. To better guide skymouths. Then you will both be ready to challenge.”

Sellis's entire expression changed. “We will be ready.”

I swallowed. They spoke in circles.

Rumul turned back to me. “Wik says you are doing well, but you must do this last thing quickly. Before Allsuns. The need is great. It will not be easy. And you must learn to fly as we do.”

His eyes met mine, and I sensed he was daring me to succeed in my father's place. Or to fail on my own. For him, I was an experiment. No risk to him, only to myself. The higher I went, the further I could fall.

 

14

SENSE

Sellis watched me closely, silent questions hovering behind her eyes. She complimented my quick rise to third-stripe and compared her hand mark with mine. They were identical.

“Each council member has their own style,” she said, touching hers.

“What is that ink they use? It burns.”

She did not take her eyes off her mark. “A Singer secret. They mix it with something from the skymouths. That's what stings and what makes the marks turn silver.”

I winced at the thought of gaining tattoos around my eyes like Wik had.

I didn't see him that day. I did not know when he learned of my rise. Instead, I climbed down to the novices' tier and watched the class. They practiced towers, much as I'd learned them at Densira for the wingtest.

When the Magister dismissed them, the novices broke left and right around me. Only Moc and Ciel greeted me.

“Why do they do that?” Around Sellis, the novices gathered and chittered happily, telling her about everything that happened in the Spire. She had the benefit of many eyes. I had two extra pairs only, both trained on me.

“You're unpredictable,” Moc said. “You do unusual things. You couldn't keep the Silence.”

“You're tall.”

“Your voice is still strange.”

I raised a hand. “Enough, thanks.” I saw things more clearly. Even after showing them how quickly I could learn to be like them, the young Singers-to-be were still uncomfortable. I was different. The Spire didn't like different. “You and Ciel aren't bothered?”

Ciel tilted her head and laughed. “You're new. Everything in the Spire is old and always happens up down up down. You came in sideways.”

They liked me for precisely the reasons the others didn't. The twins were tiny and strange, but they were the eyes and ears I had in the Spire. I needed them.

But they'd begun disappearing for days, even before the Conclave. When they returned, their temples bruised, their eyes bloodshot, I asked what had happened, and they tried to explain.

“Training,” they had said. “We train to hear better.”

The day after my meeting with Rumul, I found out what they meant.

*   *   *

Wik sent a whipperling to the twins and me. The message chips it carried listed a tier and an alcove. Two levels down.

When we arrived, breathing hard from rushing, I caught a glimmer of metal. Wik held an ancient tool in his hand. Its base was the same shape as the bruises that sometimes appeared at Ciel's temples: a deep purple blotch overlaying her soft, honey-colored skin.

My fingertips brushed the cold lenses that hung from my neck. Wik frowned at me. “You have a disadvantage, Kirit. You do not know how to listen.”

This was unfair. I tried very hard to listen. I had already heard the city whisper and roar.

Noting my frown, he shook his head. “When they are very young, Singers begin training in a different kind of listening. Some use what they learn to better hear the city. Others, to keep track of signals when we fly and fight. Still others use what they hear to see better.”

The last pulled me out of my study of Ciel's hair, her complex braids.

Seeing better with hearing?

“Close your eyes,” he said, coming to stand very close behind me. I twisted to look at him, and he raised his eyebrows and waited.

I closed my eyes.

Wik pressed one end of the metal tool against my temple.

In the darkness, I felt the pulse of his breath against my cheek. He didn't speak.

A cool strip of silk was placed over my closed eyes and tightened. I tried to pull away, but Wik held me firm. “Don't move.”

Then a sound of metal hitting metal. So much metal, I thought as the tool began to vibrate against my head.

“Listen,” whispered Wik.

I strained to do what he asked. I heard nothing beyond a muffled giggle on the other side of the room.

“Listen with your skin, your bones,” Wik said as he struck the metal rod again. This time, a hum echoed deep within my skull.

“Now we will change something,” he said. “See what the echoes do.”

I heard robes swish and Ciel tell Moc, “No, that way!” Then silence again. Then that sound vibration as Wik hit the rod pressing into my head. Echoes and vibration surrounded me. They had a slightly different shape, flatter, faster than before, but I couldn't figure out why.

I described it to Wik. “Good!” He removed the tool from my head, the blindfold from my eyes.

In front of me, Ciel stood holding a broad piece of bone. She lowered it and rubbed her arms.

“You see?” she asked.

I didn't, not really. “I see the panel you're holding.”

“But what did you hear, before? Think.”

I heard vibrations. Waves of sound colliding behind my blindfolded eyes. They hurt. “The vibrations were different when you stood in front of me?”

Ciel grinned. Her eyes glowed as if I'd performed a wonderful trick.

Wik smiled too. “Good.” They blindfolded me again, but without the metal rod. “Now try to mimic the vibration the rod made: tilt your head back slightly, open your mouth—yes, just like that—and click your tongue against the roof of your mouth very quickly.”

That sounded ridiculous. I lifted the edge of my blindfold with a finger and looked at them. They were surely making fun of me.

“Just do it!” Wik was growing exasperated. He wanted discipline, not questions.

Blindfold dropped, the dark complete, I tried to do what he asked. My mouth gaped open, and I pressed the tip of my tongue against my mouth to make a clicking sound, as I'd heard Sellis do sometimes in flight.

“Faster!” Ciel whispered.

I heard the clicks in my head, but still they meant nothing.

Until their shape changed. Instead of sound leaving me, some of it returned, faintly, as if the noises I made had bounced off something. Echoing. I tried to lift the blindfold again. Wik stopped my hand. “No. Tell me what you heard.”

“The sound changed. Like Ciel was holding the chip up in front of me again.”

Wik took my hand from the silk blindfold and guided it away from me, until my fingers connected with the hard slab of the bone chip, an arm's span from my face.

“You heard it there.”

“So?” I couldn't see how this was important.

Wik sighed at my tone. Even blindfolded, I could guess the face he made. Frustrated. Full of frowns.

“So. Try it again.”

I heard robes swish, then silence. Something had changed, and they wanted me to guess it by making that ridiculous face while clicking my tongue. Fine. Though I could not imagine the dignified Singers doing something like this, I tilted my head back and clicked again, faster this time.

I strained to hear the echoes. “The chip is farther away?”

“How do you know?”

“The echoes are fainter?”

“Echoes? Plural? Listen to what your body is telling you.”

And I got it. “Plural echoes. Two objects, farther away.”

“Reach out.”

I swept my arm in a half circle. Stretched my fingers as far as they would go. Touched nothing. I attempted again to lift the blindfold, but Wik stopped me once more.

“Walk forward two steps, then reach out again.”

When I did, my sweeping hand brushed one bone chip to my left, then Moc or Ciel's small fingers, then air, then a silk panel held taut by more small fingers.

“That's very useful, Wik. I can find small children holding objects in an empty room with my eyes closed.” I felt ridiculous. Like they were setting me up for a prank.

I heard the smile in his voice. “You learned that very fast, Kirit. Good. You will need to learn much more, even faster.”

I waited.

“This is your room now, Kirit. No more sleeping outside Sellis's alcove.”

I sighed with relief. That was a very good change.

“But,” Wik added, “you will live here blindfolded. If you remove the blindfold, you will fail the training.” His voice didn't waver. He was serious.

Fail. How much? I wondered. Could I fail just this portion of being a Singer, like with the wingtest? Or would I fail the whole thing? I resolved to not fail any of it.

He continued, “When you are ready, you may meet us in the dining alcove for something to eat. But you may not remove the blindfold.”

That didn't sound like such a bad task. When I said so, I heard Ciel laugh. Something grated, bone on bone. A lid, being rolled away from the floor. Ciel took my hand and walked me forward five steps. I heard the sucking sound of a windbeaters' tunnel, low, near the floor.

My new alcove was seemingly part of the vent system. If I made a mistake and got too close to it, I could be sucked out of the Spire. Worse, whenever I left the alcove, I would know the Gyre's edge was nearby.

“You wouldn't risk me falling. You need me.” My voice was almost pleading.

“We need someone who can fly as we do, not someone who stands on ledges and shouts at the sky.” Wik's voice was firm. He meant every word.

They bound the blindfold and covered it with another layer of silk. If I broke the second layer, it would be obvious for all to see.

“I don't know how to do this.” All I'd been shown was some sort of mouth trick, a stunt with echoes.

“Use your ears, Kirit. Use the feeling in your bones,” Wik said from farther away. He pressed the metal rod into my hands. “Few animals fly at night. You must become a bat.”

And they said no more. I reached out with my hands, but they were gone. All was silent. And dark.

At first, all I could hear was my own heartbeat. Then the sounds of the city, the passage of robed Singers above and below me, the bones all around me, began to whisper.

With the blindfold tight around my eyes, I was caught within a wall of darkness. My own enclosure. I felt panic stir.

To quiet the noise, I tried standing still where Ciel had left me. I tilted my head back and clicked, my tongue soft against my palate. I experimented with different speeds. The alcove's dimensions were small, though not as small as the pocket where I was first held in the Spire. And this room's exit was an obvious arch. No echoes at all. But I refused to walk out yet, into the jumble of the Spire, and towards the edge of the Gyre. I needed to practice, a lot. And fast.

I explored the alcove with my hands and with the echoes I could make. I tried using the rod and humming. I sensed that the ceiling was low.

A different set of echoes, lower and less sharp, told me something about what was arranged along the far wall. I slid my foot forward and skirted the vent to reach the sleeping pad and the necessaries. Then I curled into a ball and slept.

When I woke, it was dark. My hands went to my face, and I realized it would always be dark until the blindfold was taken away. I lay still and listened, trying to breathe slowly, so that I could hear other things besides my heart pounding.

The rhythm of the Spire had slowed. I heard robes sliding down the bone ladders and across the floors. I heard whispers from passing Singers, but not many. Then I heard a snap of silk and battens, the sound of someone leaping into the Gyre nearby. This was glorious: the sharp sounds wings made against wind, the song a body made when it cut through the air.

I sat up. Others had learned to hear. I could too. I touched my tongue to the roof of my mouth again. It felt fuzzy, like I'd been doing this too much. I clicked my tongue fast, and I found the shape of the space I occupied. When I knew that, I could walk it.

I thunked my shins hard against a bone bench. My own yelp was the loudest sound I'd heard in hours.

Giving up seemed so easy. I had to find my wings by touch.

Still, I pulled them over my shoulders without removing the blindfold. I heard the drag of the straps across my robe. The city whispered blandishments from the walls. A class let out two tiers above me, and I heard the almost-whispers of the youngest novices as if they were much closer.

Focus. I needed to focus.

I shuffled back to the center of the room and made a slow turn. My echoes bounced off the bench differently than the wall. My sleeping mat muffled sound, while the alcove's archway pulled it out into the passage beyond.

I practiced until I could sense the room. My stomach growled, then gave up. My mouth felt thick with thirst. I echoed my way across the room to a hook, where something sounded solid and soft at the same time. I reached out and touched a lukewarm bladder of water. Carefully, I lifted it from its hook. I drank and laughed at what I'd done, coughing as my first success went down my windpipe, rather than my throat.

When I thought I was ready, I stepped out of the alcove.

Sounds washed over me from everywhere. People moved past, close and far, and their sounds battered at my senses. Behind the blindfold, I could perceive shapes rushing at me and away, but the noise was confusing. I stepped back into the alcove and lay down. I could not do this. Moc and Ciel couldn't do this yet, and they'd been practicing for longer than I.