Fran Wilde - Updraft

“You’d best keep up on your own,” she said as she turned to descend. “I won’t be slowed down. I challenge for Singers’ wings this year.”

My aching feet strained to support me as I stumbled after her. The treads had barely enough space for a foot. My blisters and cuts made each step painful; my strained muscles too. I drew breath and tried to look strong. Capable.

“I already passed my wingtest,” I reassured her, while attempting to smile over my shoulder.

She paused on the ladder and looked up at me, flipping her dark braids off her shoulders, digging her close-set gaze right into mine. “That means nothing here. Nothing.”

I began to respond, but she’d descended again, and my fingers had started to slip. I clutched the slim carved rungs and scrambled after her.

We passed tier after tier, until I whimpered through my teeth each time my feet touched a new rung. On each tier, I heard the swish of robes as people passed, the murmur of conversations, and the sound of wind swirling nearby. On one floor, several voices were raised in song: tenors and altos. Their melody echoed off the wall where we climbed.

On another, lower tier, a group of children scrubbed the floor near the ladder. Two whispered in the shadows, their brushes dripping beside them. As Sellis passed, she hissed at them to get back to work. They stared for a moment longer, steel-blue eyes peering from identical faces, their robes gray with one blue stripe like mine. Then they scrambled back to the group just as an older Singer rounded a curve.

Sellis’s gray silk robes had three stripes of blue at the hem. The lowest stripe’s edge, undone and fraying, dragged on the risers. I tripped on it twice, then caught myself. Judging by its color and fit, my new clothing must have been intended for a much younger novice. How would I earn my stripes? How would I begin to keep up with Sellis?

She stopped so suddenly on the next tier that I nearly put my foot on her head. Sellis hissed and grabbed my ankle, threatening to topple me. “You will pay attention!”

“I assure you I am trying.”

“You are worse than a fledge!”

I could not argue that. Everything within the Spire struck me as strange, as if a tower like Densira had been turned inside out. My eyes ached for sky with each tier we passed; my ears missed the comforting sounds of families arguing, neighbors haggling, babies crying. For a group named Singers, their home was almost as quiet as the sky. They walked it as if they were listening for messages on the wind.

Sellis let go of me, but the suddenness of my change in situation kept me pinned to the wall. No longer trapped in Rumul’s prison, but still inside the Spire. I’d given up the sky and the towers in exchange for a life enclosed on all sides by the Spire’s bone walls.

Nat might have known what to do; I did not.

“Breathe,” Sellis said, no tinge of mercy to her voice. “I won’t carry you if you faint.”

I inhaled. I would find a way to live in this new place.

We left the ladders and paced half the circumference of the tier. Other girls who seemed to be the same age as Sellis, or older, greeted her as she passed. They stared at me. I felt the pit’s grime on my skin, the dried blood on my hands. The way my arms and legs showed beneath the too-small novice robe. I watched my feet, trying not to trip and further set myself apart.

To our left, the passageway beyond the alcoves and classrooms ran to a sudden drop. The Spire’s center was a void. Wind whistled as it rose past each tier, up and down the hollow of the Spire.

“To fall into the Gyre,” Sellis said, watching me with a level of calm that made my skin crawl, “is to fall forever. You should be careful.”

I craned my neck to look past her and saw galleries spaced around the Gyre, carved into the tower’s spines. Places to sit while watching a challenge, perhaps. Sellis dragged me on.

She turned suddenly, into a small alcove barely big enough for one person to sleep in. “Here are my quarters.” I hoped mine were close by. I could barely stand.

She glared at me again. “You will sleep here.” She pointed to the floor in front of her alcove. “They’ve made you my charge. I name you my acolyte. I do this for Rumul, and so you will do this for me. What I need, you get. What I drop, you pick up. Understand?” Her voice was brisk, businesslike. She didn’t care how I answered.

“Rising above your tier again, Sellis?” A boy peered around the corner. “You can’t take an acolyte until you are a Singer.”

“Special case,” Sellis said. “She is just now committed to the Spire.”

The boy whistled low and came closer, looking at me. “You came from outside?”

I saw no use in pretending otherwise. “I did.”

“Lurai,” Sellis said, “you aren’t even supposed to be on this tier. Go away.”

Lurai. Lurai. The name was so familiar. Beliak’s lost brother, yes.

As I remembered, he turned to leave.

“Did you come from Viit? I think I flew wingtest with your brother,” I said, hoping I could keep him here another few moments. The last thing I wanted was to be left alone with Sellis.

Lurai’s brow furrowed, and he smiled, bemused. “I don’t know any brothers. I am Spire, since I was young.” And he started to turn away again, but stopped. “What are the towers like? What is your name?”

“Her name is Kirit Spire, and she is not going to fill your head with boring tower talk, Lurai. She has work to do here.” Sellis gave him a gentle shove and then, from somewhere within her alcove, handed me a bucket filled with stink. “Get rid of that, acolyte. Bring the bucket back, cleaned. In the morning, I will have mending for you to do.”

I waited for her to tell me where to take the bucket. To point me towards the pouring points that every tower in the city had. But she turned her back to me, lay down on her sleeping pad with a sigh, and appeared to fall asleep with no further trouble.

Lurai had disappeared. I stood alone in the darkening tier with a bucket and orders, but no way to fulfill them. I heard rustling around me and knew that other occupants of the tier were peering out of their alcoves to see what I would do.

I considered taking the bucket and dumping it on Sellis, but this would have been a bad way to start my new life.

“Pssst.”

The whisper came from near the edge of the Gyre. I shambled over, feet aching, cautious of traps.

“We’ll show you.” The whisper again, but no body to go with it. “Over here. By the edge.”

Now I saw them. The blue-eyed imps from several tiers up. Crouched in the gallery, watching.

“Won’t you get in trouble?”

They shook their heads. Twins. Rare enough in the city. I couldn’t imagine a parent giving both children to the Spire. They must have been orphans. The Singers took in orphans.

“I’m Moc,” one of the twins said. “She’s Ciel.”

“Kirit,” I said. “Kirit … Spire.” My voice trembled on the last word.

“We’re all Spire. Shouldn’t matter when you got here,” Ciel piped up with her high child’s voice. A lock of brass-colored hair hung over her eye. The rest was neatly braided.

“But we were born here,” Moc added. So much for my theory. “So was Sellis. She thinks it does matter. That’s why she thinks she’s so much better than you.”

I blinked. That was good to know.

Moc took my hand and led me to a double rope. “Pull on that.”

I did, for what seemed like ages. My hands throbbed as the rope rubbed them rawer still. Finally a large bin appeared, and I poured Sellis’s bucket into it. The smell made me gag. When I was done, Ciel helped me pull on the other side of the rope until there was resistance, then a tug.