Fran Wilde - Updraft

Everyone but Ezarit.

Allmoons was in two days, which wasn’t long. But that would be too late. At least she wouldn’t see me fall.

If I could just practice my rolls and climbs once more. If my voice was prettier.

Too dark to fly now. Wingtest started after dawn. Instead, I practiced in the main room. I unfurled my wings, slipped my arms into the straps, stretched my fingers to the harnesses that controlled curvature and, to some extent, lift. The woven harness that held my feet when I flew dragged on the floor with a soft ruck-ruck-ruck. I began twisting this way and that, angling my hands to curve the wings’ tethers, ducking my head to let the air curl around me.

“You look like you’re dancing,” Nat said. I jumped. He’d been behind the screen, reading.

“Practicing. You don’t?”

He shook his head. “Magister said I’m a natural.”

The lanterns grew dim as the oil in them ran out. Elna came in from the balcony and kissed the tops of our heads. She whispered, “Don’t stay up too late,” and went to bed. Outside, the full moon finally cleared the clouds again, flooding the balcony and the outermost rooms with pearl-gray light. Dark wings chased bugs between distant towers, and the closest towers sparkled under the star-glimmered sky. It was a soft night. Almost as beautiful as an Allmoon.

Someone in the tower had picked up their dolin and was plucking at the strings. The chords drifted down like raindrops.

“Come on, Kirit. We know everything we need to know already. We finished the punishment. Watch the stars come out.”

I growled quietly. Nat wasn’t nervous anymore. Me, I had everything riding on this test. If I did well, the Spire would have no claim on me. Ezarit would know my worth to her. My luck would be restored. Tomorrow I could begin training to become a trader like my mother. Or I could disappear.

Nat was right; he was a natural. I’d always had to work at it.

I knew I’d pass the first part, Laws. I’d memorized all the songs. The test focused on accuracy, so the fact that my voice sounded like scourweed on bone couldn’t hurt me. I hoped. I worried most about Group. Anything could happen then. Sometimes everything did.

I closed my eyes and spun, feeling my old wings fill with the slight breeze. The battens supported two layers of silk that spread and furled like bats’ wings. The wingframe could lock in position to free the hands, or a skilled flier could use the grips woven into each wing to rake and angle the wingfoils during a glide. I felt the grips with my fingers, the leads of the silkspun ropes that ran to eyebolts drilled at the tips of the wingframe. Singers’ wings used tendon instead of silk. For us, silk had to do.

I imagined myself diving and turning in a clear blue sky. I imagined leading a group. I had to do well. I had to focus. But instead of the rules for upwind group flight, or the different traditions of various towers in the city, I saw the strange patterns on the bone chips Tobiat gave us. My arms dropped to my sides. My concentration had failed me. No more flying tonight.

When I opened the shutters, I found Nat sitting on the balcony, looking at the moon through a hole in one of the age-worn bone chips — Naton’s plans. I hesitated, one foot on the threshold, then stepped out.

Nat turned and peered at me one-eyed through the carved chip.

“What are they, do you think?” he said.

The chip made Nat’s brown eye seem flat and enormous, with extra sclera. Like a skymouth’s. I pushed that thought out of my mind. The sky had been clear for days.

I steadied my voice. “No idea.” Tried to think of things a bridge artifex like Naton would want to make. Something woven or knotted. “Probably not a telescope.”

He lowered the skein. “Not a good one anyway.”

I stood well back from the edge of the balcony, my wings furled. The night air was cold. A large bat dove from one of the towers, chasing something. Stinging bugs, hopefully, or a jumping rat. Those were a menace.

Nat followed the bat with his eyes. “Good hunter, that one.”

The pause in conversation stretched out. He waited for me to say something. I scrambled for a topic that didn’t include Singers or skymouths.

“Do you want to stay near Densira, Nat? After Allmoons, I mean.”

He nodded. “I want to make sure Ma’s taken care of. Besides, the best hunters in the north are Densira. What about you?”

I swallowed. Few knew that my mother was thinking of other towers. That would be a betrayal of Densira. And no one could know of the Singer’s threat. Or how I might escape it.

“I want to fly with Ezarit. The best trader in the city.”

He looked at me sideways. “She’s not trying to apprentice you to another tower?”

“We’re a team,” I said. He wasn’t wrong. Everyone understood that it was sometimes necessary for the city to shift apprentices between towers; but not everyone wanted to be the one to go. I wasn’t tied to Densira any more than my mother was, so I shrugged.

A week ago, I’d dreamed of seeing the rest of the city. Of living on a tower with bridges connected to a close ring of neighbors. I bet it was a lot more interesting than out here, where everyone knew everything about you before you were even born. I knew it had to be better than living behind the Spire’s wall.

I tried to push the Spire and its Singers from my mind, only to return to worrying about the wingtest. “Want to practice Laws?”

He was sighting with his bow, out across the night sky. Aiming for bats, which was bad luck. The skein was back in his pocket.

“Nat!”

“What’s it like, do you think, for animals up here?” he mused. “There’s a whole lot of eat or be eaten. And they have to do a lot of work. Just like us.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“We do what the tower council tells us, and the guilds. And especially the Singers. No one asks why anymore.”

“No one wants to go back to what life was like in the clouds, before the Singers.”

“Who says we would? I have a theory…”

Nat always had theories. That way lay danger. “What would you do if no one told you what you had to do?”

“I’d hunt! And wingfight. When I’ve got my wingmark, I’ll fight for Densira. With a new set of wings.”

Before I’d moved uptower, Nat had talked about training more whipperlings and expanding to kaviks. The wingfighting was new. Sidra’s influence again.

“Do you care about anything but trading, Kirit?”

I couldn’t think of one thing I wanted more. If not the power of trading itself, the feeling of connecting towers, knowing I was helping people. Knowing I made it happen. Besides, trading didn’t require much singing. Not even socially. Perfect all around.

There were other things I enjoyed at Densira. Watching the wingfights. And carving, though I hadn’t done much of that since I was young. Even minding our silk spiders. But trading — finding something of value and exchanging it for something people I knew needed? That was fun. Ezarit loved it. Even when she wasn’t flying through a skymouth migration, she’d said it was a good way to rise higher in the city.

Perhaps someday I’d leave Densira and become a trader for a more central tower. Perhaps I’d return and place a bet on Nat’s wingfighting team. All I had to do was pass wingtest with full marks.

At the back of my mind, a new thought rose. I cared about one thing more than flying the city: escaping the net the Singer had set for me.

I hummed a Law, trying to get Nat to test me. He finally responded. “That’s Kamik. No going against the decision of the Singers, the council, and your tower.” He was right. “Fine. What about this one?” He sang a soft, low tune, almost a whisper.