Fran Wilde - Updraft

“You say so, but I didn’t see the city throw those people down.”

He reddened. “Your decision, then, is to join them?”

It was not. “I want to know why.”

He wiped his dripping face with his robe. “Kirit, there is no more sacred duty than that of a Singer. We keep the city whole. We make sure its traditions are not forgotten. That its people do not throw everything to the clouds. To do so, we listen to the city, appease it, and enforce its rules. Do you understand?”

I felt hunger stretch its wings in my stomach. Thought of how Singers taught the Magisters, who then taught us histories, Laws. “If you maintain traditions, why are songs different inside the Spire?”

“You have seen how people revile us, fear us? Even as they respect us?”

“Yes.” Remembered long pauses after the word Singer came up in tower conversation.

“Can you guess why we might change the words of our history?”

His eyes glittered in the lamplight. I was being tested. How much of my Singer training had sunk in?

Continue arguing, his eyes seemed to say. Or prove you deserve the opportunity you’ve been given. I cleared my throat. “The songs Singers learn are more frightening. The towers don’t suffer as much of our past because they have forgotten. So they don’t fear each other.”

He inclined his head. “Such as?”

“The clouds. What the time before the Rise was really like.”

“War. Horror. The things citizens did to their towermates, to their neighbors, Kirit. The city needed to heal, to come together again, once we rose out of it.”

In my mind’s eye, I saw the scenes I had learned to sing. Tower by tower, the horrors. “We learn different verses so that we may keep it from happening, without making the rest of the city eager for revenge.”

I realized this for truth as I spoke it. The Singers had done this. They had saved the city in more ways than one.

And Conclave — when I lived in the towers, it was used to frighten stubborn children to action. As we grew, we learned that it was a way for the city to release the burden of broken Laws. A way to redeem the offenders.

Now that I had seen what actually happened, I could not hold my tongue. “What kind of people do this to one another?”

He bristled. I’d pushed too far. I saw anger in his eyes. Then he blinked and took a breath. His voice grew softer.

“The city demands much of us in return for shelter. Long ago, we learned to tend it in ways that you already consider barbaric. Very well.” Rumul looked at me, both hands held out, palms up. “It is the trial of the Singers to do this. If we ignore the city, we fall. If citizens begin to fight, if we lose our traditions, we fall. The towers crack. Would you go back through the clouds? So many died, coming up. The city may rise with or without us, Kirit. The tiers will fill in with bone and push us out. To live, we must rise too. To rise, we must appease our home when it grows angry with us.”

“Haven’t you tried to appease it any other way?” I thought of Nat, growing up without Naton.

“Yes.” The way he said it, I knew he believed it. But he continued. “We’ve lost four towers, all on the outer edge. Broken. Lith was only the most recent to fall. So many people have died, Kirit. Thousands, all at once.”

My mouth formed an O, but no sound came out.

Rumul looked up at the ceiling of his alcove, which was carved with stars. “That is the sacred trust of the Singers.”

I shook my head slowly. “And what do we get in return?”

“Life.” He spread his hands like wings.

I thought of what I now knew. I thought of Wik’s eyes at Conclave.

“And what of people like Nat’s father? Naton?”

I could see he recognized the name, was trying to remember why. I saw the memory rise behind his eyes. His mouth hardened to a line. “He broke Laws, Kirit.”

“No one who knew him thinks he would do that. What Laws?”

“Laws within the Spire. He had a great trust from us, and he betrayed it.”

“What trust? What did he do?” I could not stop myself, though Rumul’s look grew more inscrutable. “I want to know the truth!”

Rumul came to my side and gripped my arm. “Then I will tell you,” he said, his voice softer than it was before. The honeyed voice. “Naton was a friend. A brilliant bridge artifex. He knew more about the Spire than most citizens ever will. Naton…” He paused. His voice was very sad now. Sad and soft. “Colluded with a disgraced Singer to bring information out of the Spire. It began innocently enough. He saw something during the course of his work; he was curious. But in the end, this curiosity became dangerous. He had learned things that others in the city would pay well for. Knowledge that would have allowed others huge advantages over the rest of the city.”

Knowing Nat’s own curiosity, I could believe his father had been curious too. But selling out the Singers? I didn’t believe it. What was Rumul telling me?

“To whom did he betray you? What was it?”

Rumul turned to look at me.

“Nothing more glorious than being on wing at Allsuns, is there? And Allmoons.”

I began to nod. Then I realized the latter for a trap. He had turned his attention back to me. I closed my mouth tight.

He chuckled. “You’re learning.”

“No one is allowed to fly on Allmoons.”

He raised a finger. “No citizens fly at Allmoons.” He said it as if he held a greater secret behind his lips. I wanted to draw it out, and I didn’t want to know.

“The Singers fly at night?” I pictured myself and Nat at Allmoons. We’d felt we alone owned the sky. We hadn’t known. Nat would have loved knowing. And then I realized.

“This is what Naton found out.”

Rumul paused and smiled. Then he took a breath and continued. “Some Singers fly at night. An important skill, especially for those who can control the skymouths.”

“How is that possible? Nat and I—” I cut myself off, to avoid thinking about Nat. “How do you see the wind? The towers? How do you not collide and fall?” I stopped and thought. “The skymouths?”

He held up a finger. Patience . “It is a skill you have yet to learn.”

I was distracted. Now that I knew Naton’s treason against the city, that he’d found out the Singers fly at night, I wanted to know more about how they flew. But for Nat’s memory, I chased the last shreds of the secret down. The bone chips Tobiat had given to us had notes etched on the backs, in what I now knew to be Singer notations. Maybe they held the secret to night flying. And we’d had them in our hands the whole time.

“Who was Naton going to tell?”

Rumul shrugged. “We learned he had betrayed us shortly before the last Conclave. He hadn’t yet shared what he knew with his contact, but it was a trader.”

“But he never told?”

“He was caught before he could pass the information on. We caught his colluder afterwards, but the notes he’d made were lost in the confusion of Conclave.”

“How did you learn about the betrayal?”

Rumul grew still again. Then sighed. “My first acolyte, on his excursion. He discovered the treason.” He paced the length of his room, to the hammock, and returned to his workbench. Sat down with a reluctant frown.

Treason.

“The acolyte had taken up with a young, ambitious trader. Naton had told her already that he had information he wanted to sell. She was gathering the markers to pay him. Our Singer kept her from making the mistake of meeting him and turned Naton in.” He looked at me significantly.

I drew the truth together in my head, saw it as a whole. The trader, young and ambitious — and who wouldn’t be faster at trading if they could fly at night when no one else could?