Fran Wilde - Updraft

I tried once more. “My mother—”

Traded me away.

“You can’t hold me here! You cheated me of my wings, and you cannot hold me!”

I ached to see the horizon beyond the walls. To feel a breeze. See a sunrise. There was no way to tell how much time had passed except by the arrival of buckets.

The total enclosure made my heart pound against my ribs. To calm myself, I listed what I used to see from my quarters in Densira: clouds, birds on the wing, Mondarath, sometimes Viit if the weather was right. Banners. Green plants. Neighbors climbing ladders, crossing far-off bridges, carrying children nestled tight to their breasts as they flew short distances. Sky.

I had always been able to see the sky. There had always been a breeze laced with ice, or wet with rain, or hot with summer. There was no weather here. No sky.

The walls of my prison absorbed blows from my fists, cut my skin when I struck a sharp carving. I sank again to the floor. The walls surrounded me like an unforgiving second skin. When I woke, it was to the grinding sound of the panel above drawing back and another pail. This one contained another sackful of broth, with the gritty must of dirgeon. Those birds ate anything, and it showed in the taste of the meat. I was willing to eat like them at that moment.

The pail still rattled. A bone tool had been tucked beneath the sack, its sharp end wrapped in silk. A carving tool.

“What do you want?” I shouted to the hole above me, not expecting an answer. But then a shadowed head appeared in its halo.

“We keep the city safe,” said a voice. “We look for those who could do the same.”

My shoulders and legs ached. I turned my head from the light and stretched to see if I could touch both walls at once. Not quite.

“You don’t want me. I break Laws. Endanger my tower. My city.” I held up my wrist, shaking the markers to make them clatter and echo.

Now that my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, I could better read the markers: Bethalial, Trespass, Treason.

“You have indeed.” And the window closed entirely.

I was Kirit Notower. Lawsbreaker. Unlucky.

I had attacked the Spire. At Allmoons. I’d attracted a skymouth. My hand tightened around the carving tool, its silk wrapper. I had lost my friend.

In the dim light, I unwound the silk from the carver’s tip. In the towers, we wrote message on bone. Dye was too valuable. Ink unavailable. The Singers, it seemed, had both. My eyes strained to read the marks on the fabric: Some believe you are more than your crimes. Some believe you can Rise. Are you worth saving?

I thought about the wingtest. About the way I’d flown. I’d not heard of Singers lifting Lawsmarks, ever. I thought about Wik, his insistence at Densira that I could help the city. Singers could do anything for the good of the city.

They wanted something from me. Perhaps I could make a trade. Convince them to lift my punishments. If I could reach them.

The carvings. At points, deep enough to allow a fingertip to jam into a crevice. Perhaps a bare toe. I pulled my silk foot wrappings off. My toes were soft and pallid in the dim light. My fingers found a place on the wall where someone — another prisoner? — had carved a series of birds in flight, circling upwards. Had they been able to carve the birds all the way to the top? If so, climbing them was better than waiting for release.

The deepest carvings had sharp edges, but my fingers still found purchase and I pulled myself up against the wall. The effort of climbing made the pads on my fingers throb. My knuckles cracked. My toes ached. I stopped, rested, then tried again, pressing my body close to the wall, pushing with my feet and calves until my leg muscles burned painfully. After the first few minutes, my fingers and toes had grown so numb, I could not shake them awake. I fell back to the carved bone floor. It was hopeless. A trick. I was never meant to leave this place.

I did not intend to do so, but I fell asleep again. I did not dream. I woke to find I’d spilled from my silk nest, kicked it aside, slept on the floor. My cheek pressed hard against a carving of the city. I rolled over and muffled a shriek of pain. My fingers had swelled and blistered. I stuck two of them in my mouth and sucked, whimpering. The taste of blood and dust from the room made me ill.

The city was silent now, the Spire too. I tried to guess what day it was — we were past Allmoons, but how far past?

With only the buckets to tell me, I had no sense of when I was. Perhaps it was evening. Perhaps Elna was already cooking dinner. Perhaps Ezarit had returned from another trade. I imagined the conversations, held to them tightly. What would Nat have been doing? And I? I would have been doing nothing, not until I could pass a wingtest without breaking the quiet.

This was no comfort.

Before long, another pail descended. It contained a dirgeon wing, already broken, its marrow drying out, and, I thought, a smaller sack of water than before. The Singer at the top of this pit had set me a timer. The more time I spent here, the less I’d be fed. Soon, my food would run out and I would vanish. No more bad luck, no more Lawsbreaker.

I drank every drop of water and savored the lone wing.

Another bucket was sent down the next day, with less water and a piece of goose liver. I lay curled in the small pile of clean silk and netting. My fingers had recovered, but my feet, with their soft pads that never had to do much, were lacerated and painful. I could barely walk, even if there’d been room enough to do so. I leaned my forehead against a wall and listened to the city whisper and pulse. I imagined Nat was here too, listening with me to the secrets of the Spire. I whispered our Laws to him.

Bethalial: In the Allmoons time of quiet, let no tower be disturbed.

Delequerriat: The act of concealment, in plain sight, may only be used to turn wrong to right.

Trade: No trader lives with jealousy or greed .

War: We rise together or fall apart. With clouds below, our judge.

On the bone wall near where my foot rested, someone had carved a skymouth attacking. It gaped at me.

I took up the tool against it, scratched over it until it disappeared.

Then I found a tiny, uncarved space in the floor. I drew the lines of Nat’s profile as I remembered it.

The sharp edge of the carver peeled tiny curls of bone away in its passage. Nat’s face looked much younger on the floor. His face from our youth, from before Ezarit and I rose. It was a poor likeness, but when I finished, I had someone to talk to.

I told him everything, in a rush. That I wanted to live, any way I could. I told him why the Singers wanted me. What Wik forbade me to tell anyone. I told him what I could do. How I could help the city.

Nat did not respond. But the Spire did: it whispered secrets back to me, until I was ready to fly.

* * *

Covered in filth, my greasy braids matted against my head like a cap, I stripped all but the last layer of silk robes from my body and piled them below where I planned to climb.

I left my friend on the floor below me, with my broken wing. The Spire’s whispers pushed me higher.

I heard them as I balanced on the tips of my toes and slipped and fell. My back arched, and my head struck hard against the wall. I heard them when I woke again. Hopeful, fearful. Calling for me.

Nat would have wondered at me, I realized. Talking to the Spire. Starving to death, more like it. Get up, Nat would have whispered. Pull yourself up.

And so I did.

I found the carving tool and poked at a blister on my forefinger, let the sack of skin weep. It hurt. I howled with the pain as I did it again and again, until I was ready. Then I wrapped my fingers and toes in what was left of the cleaner spidersilk.