Updraft (24 page)

Sellis whispered, “Not so fast!” Her voice was loud in my ears. I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth, fast, like I'd done in the Spire. My eyes rolled beneath the scarf, searching for sound.

Wik said, “Listen.”

And I could, faintly. I heard the wind against the towers and how it wrapped them with soft sweeps of breeze. I could hear gusts too.

We had so many ways to describe different types of wind.
Lifts. Crosses. Constants. Gaps.
I might one day hear them all.

Something low and large echoed ahead of me. The closest tower? Varu. The wind swept over the shape, slowly, then ripped around the higher towers beside it, whistling. Far beyond, Lith lurked, broken and forlorn. I knew it was there, though I couldn't hear it, because nothing else sounded so empty in the entire city.

I knew then that we stood at the apex of the Spire, on the western side, with Varu on my left. That was my compass. The other towers close in sounded whole and twisting. The wind moved among the tiers, and I heard soft laughter and muffled sounds of families gathered together for warmth and comfort. All very faint.

Echoes bounced off the crystals Sellis wore in her hair like shards of sound in a soft cushion. Sound marked where her body was next to mine and, in front of me, defined a broader, taller form. Wik. I reached out my hand. My palm brushed his silk robes.

“Well done, Kirit,” he said, removing my blindfold. He lifted two sets of wings from the roof, gesturing to Sellis and me.

The wing frames were covered with deep gray silk. In the dark, they were practically black. Nightwings. Invisible against the sky.

Nat,
I thought,
the stories were true.

I took one set of wings and slipped the straps over my shoulders.

“Already?” Sellis said, hesitating and pale. She looked at me and caught herself. “Kirit's barely ready.” But I realized as she spoke that she'd never flown the dark either. I wasn't so far behind her any longer.

My cheeks flushed, but I felt no fear. I knew I could die out there, but it would be among the towers, outside. In the wind. Not forgotten behind walls of bone.

“Frightened?” Sellis said to me.

“No,” I said, hoping this would continue to be true.

“You should be,” Wik said. “Many things live in the dark. Not just towers and skymouths.”

Skymouths. That did scare me. I looked over the edge of the Spire and saw the vast towers widening below us. The dark all around them, swirling to the clouds. Woozy, I had to catch myself before I fell. Sellis and Wik were too busy adjusting their wings. They did not notice.

My hand stung from Rumul's mark as I flexed it to check the buckles on my nightwings. The straps were worn in, but the wings were beautifully made. Nothing like this kind of wing in the whole city. I could almost hear them sing. The wind cut around them with a chuckle, and it tickled my ears.

“Hurry,” said Wik. “Sunrise in a few hours.”

“Why can't we test sounds at dawn?” Sellis asked.

“Because your eyes tell you what to see then. You need to train your ears.”

With that, Wik beckoned me to go first. I leapt from the Spire into the darkness.

As I leaned into my glide away from the Spire, waiting for Wik and Sellis to catch up, one of the worn buckles on my night-dark wings slipped.

The strap screeched. As the bone loop of the buckle continued to give, I could hear the fabric tearing. Before my training, I wouldn't have heard a thing.

My wings pulled taut in the wind. All around me was pitch-black. If the strap broke, I would fall and no one would see me go. I scrambled to set my right wing's elbow hook and reached as far as I could to hold the left strap together with my hand. The movement threw me off balance.

I began to spiral dizzyingly.

“What are you doing?” Wik shouted. When he realized what I held, he ordered, “Turn back now.”

I was already trying to turn back. Didn't need to be told twice. I had dipped too low to regain the top of the Spire. I couldn't maneuver, only glide and hope.

I heard the wind curve around something below me before I saw its shadowy outline, barely tinted against the darker forms of depth and clouds. A bridge.

Don't overshoot it. You have one chance.

I could barely see it to time my landing.

I tried hearing the bridge, forcing my tongue against the dry—too dry—roof of my mouth repeatedly, until I made a loud, stuttering sound.

For a moment, my ears shaped the sweep of the sinew bridge. It stretched from Varu to Hirinat tower.

The bridge echo disappeared. I was not yet skilled enough.

I tried to hold the shape I'd heard in my mind. If I could drop low enough to catch the span with something—my hook, a knife, anything, I might stop my glide without falling.

Above, I heard the others glide past me. Wik dove below what must be the bridge. Catching me on this spiral would be risky, even for an accomplished Singer. But he was there to make the last-ditch attempt if I missed.

The strap slipped farther. The bone clasp cracked. And I heard Sellis beside me. She pushed me slightly off course with her backdraft.

“Shift, Sellis!” I shouted. How could she not hear me?

I could sense every change in the wind caused by the bridge and the looming wall of the Spire. If I didn't course-correct soon, one would smash me flat, the other would cut me down.

“Sellis, break windward,” Wik yelled.

She finally heard and turned to clear the air. Her turn pulled me back onto a good landing angle for where I thought the bridge was. I kicked my feet out of their strap in time to hook the space where I pictured the railing should be.

I hoped I was right. I needed to be right.

One foot caught, then the other. I landed, sort of, hanging upside down by my ankles. The underbridge breeze swung me back and forth precariously.

The bridge wobbled as Wik landed and hauled me onto the span.

I brushed off his attempts to help inspect my wingstraps.

By feel, I could tell that both straps had been stressed with something sharp. Someone wanted me to fall far enough that I never came back.

Sellis's eyes were wide in the sere predawn light. “I couldn't turn,” she gasped, shaking. When Wik held out his hand, she shucked out of her own wings and they checked those wingstraps. They were stressed too, though not as badly. The grips had been weakened as well.

“Where did our new training wings come from?” she asked.

Wik was ashen; his tattoos, almost phosphorescent. The clip he gave to his words chilled me further. “The windbeaters sent new pairs up for the night fliers.”

“Windbeaters?” Sellis looked shocked. “But why would they ever—Rumul will—How dare…” She fell silent, shivering and looking, in the dim light, much younger and more afraid than I'd ever seen her. She caught me watching, but did not glare or flinch.

Finally, Wik spoke again. “Windbeaters. The Spire is in conflict.”

Sellis looked at Wik, then at me. “Please. We must return quickly. Tell the council. Before more Singers fall.”

 

16

GYRE

Wik had produced a sewing kit from a hidden pocket in his sleeve. He dampened a translucent cord with spit, then threaded it through the eye of a thick bone needle. He patched the break with sinew. When he finished, I tested the strap. It felt solid enough for a short flight.

Sellis paced, eager to fly once her wings were patched. Her need to make sure Rumul knew what had happened, and why, was palpable in the darkness.

“We will pursue what happened,” Wik promised, when I asked him to elaborate on the windbeaters' actions. “Not now. We must do things carefully.”

Not now. Tradition. Carefully
. Wik's discipline took patience. I had little to spare.

We flew the short span of night to the Spire. Sellis and I clung to wall hooks outside while Wik worked the gate. We were at a higher tier than the one Nat and I had tried to break into at Allmoons.

A predawn gust cut around the Spire cold and loud. The gate ground open just as sunlight tinged the horizon's dark clouds. We crawled through and emerged on a windbeater tier.

Wik pointed for us to climb back to our tiers, but I planted my feet. I wanted to stay, to confront the windbeaters. To find my father.

He shook his head emphatically. “Too dangerous,” he whispered. “In case they're targeting someone.”

“Why would they do that?” I was still chilled by the near catastrophe.

Sellis looked like she was too, her usual haughtiness banished. She hesitated beside me, desperate to know more about the windbeaters' intent before reporting to Rumul.

“They can't fly anymore, but they can still meddle,” she whispered.

I sat down on the tier floor, stubborn. I refused to move.

Wik's face turned stony. He was unused to being questioned by his charges.

Sellis shifted from one foot to the other, then sat down beside me.

I returned Wik's gaze. “If we may not talk to them because we are not yet Singers, then you must ask them why.”

Wik groaned. When we still refused to move, he went to wake and interrogate a windbeater, one he said he could trust.

As he walked away, Sellis stared at me, her eyes wide. “Novices don't question Singers.” She didn't look at all comfortable with what we'd done. But she wasn't scolding me.

“We'll get an answer, at least.” I hoped I was right.

“It wasn't personal,” Wik whispered when he returned. “They couldn't know who would fly those wings.”

“Rumul needs to know.” Sellis rose, picked up her nightwings, and hurried to the ladders.

Wik watched her go, but I kept my eyes on him. “Why?”

“A few windbeaters have become open to trading favors, though it is not often done,” Wik said. “In return for gossip from uptower. Your father, for one.”

“And trying to murder Singers?”

“Rarely. They are trying to influence something.” He seemed unfazed, which made me want to shake him. I balled my fists and focused on breathing while he continued, “I can't tell who is behind this. I will find out.”

Influence. Meddling. That was what Singers called someone almost dying. I was not comforted, but I let Wik nudge me back uptower while I continued to ponder.

My father traded in gossip.

I could find a way to use that.

The next afternoon, the dining alcove rumbled with gossip, but not the kind that my father would need. A windbeater had fallen, tragically, into the Gyre.

“Who?” I asked Sellis.

“An old crone who thought she'd outsmart the council,” she replied. Her chin was up; her confidence had returned. Her hands were folded neatly on the table. She'd downed her meal with relish.

A crone. Not my father. Still, retribution came fast in the Spire. I vowed silently that this would not be my fate.

In the days after, as we continued to train, we saw windbeaters below, practicing wind shifts, as usual. The situation seemed to have settled. But I could not convince Sellis to let me go downtower again. She went so far as to post Lurai by my alcove. It was an honor, she said. An acolyte.

My refusal to obey Wik had alarmed someone, and Sellis was making sure I didn't venture anywhere on my own. I waited for any chance to go back down to the windbeaters' tier, but I was never alone.

We worked on Singer skills, checking our wings well each time. We studied advanced echoing. Sellis and I flew blindfolded. Wik and I practiced skymouth calls atop the tower and on the wing.

We fought more now, testing the younger novices or being tested ourselves against older, just-turned Singers. Bone-knife cuts and bruises from the walls of the Gyre laced my arms, legs, and face like Singer tattoos. Sellis was equally marked.

Some days, the wind patterns were too strong, too complex for us. I bent a batten when I crashed into a gallery. Skidded onto the tier. Sellis fell so far that she had to climb back up on the ladders outside the Gyre.

She was skittish when she finally made it back to our tier.

“I almost fell beyond the windbeaters. That's forbidden. They caught me with a hook.”

“What did you see?” I asked.

“They are preparing rot gas below.” At my confusion, she added, “The windbeaters throw flaming balls of it into the Gyre during a challenge if it's going too slow.”

We began to hear new rumors in the dining alcove, murmurs of arguments in council, of Rumul yelling at someone in his alcove.

Even Moc didn't know what was happening. “Something big,” he said, peering over the edge of the Gyre.

Windbeaters gathered by the vents below, practicing new patterns with their huge silk wings.

The Spire's quiet passages clotted with groups of gray-robed Singers who talked almost silently and scattered when approached. I tried to find Wik, or Rumul, but they spent their days on the council tier. By the next morning, Sellis did not appear at breakfast.

“Ciel”—I caught the girl as she sped along the passage—“what has happened now?”

She wordlessly pointed to the Gyre, just as the gusts within rose to a howl. There was so much wind, pushed and funneled through the Spire's abyss so fast, that things not tied down near the balconies began to be pulled into the funnel. A few pieces of silk flew out through the apex. Singers and novices alike ran to grab precious objects and secrete them away.

Rumul appeared on the council gallery, and everyone stopped and turned to look. He spoke, and the wind carried his voice throughout the Spire.

“There has been a challenge. Singer Terrin wishes to address the city. The council has disagreed. He has issued the challenge.”

“Singer's burden,” the groupings of gray-winged Singers said.

“He will fight for this right, and by fighting, earn his voice, or lose his wings, or forfeit his life.”