Fran Wilde - Updraft

Ezarit. Naton had intended to give what he knew to Ezarit.

Oh, Ezarit.… Kept from breaking Laws by her … lover. Rumul’s acolyte. My father. My father had betrayed Naton, and kept Ezarit safe, and helped the Singers keep their secrets. No.

Rumul read my conclusions in my expression. “You see it now.”

I did — and if my stomach hadn’t been emptier than the sky before a migration, I might have been sick with it. But the memory of the secret Naton died for tugged at me.

They flew at night. Singers flew at night. And Ezarit had wanted to know how.

Two questions fought in my mind. They raced from my mouth.

“What happened to my father? And how do you do it? Flying in the dark, when you cannot see?”

Rumul smiled. His voice smoothed even more. “You will learn, if you choose. Sellis is training.”

He was silent, waiting on my answer. I knew danger still lingered. Rumul’s hold on the Spire was stronger than any councilman’s. And I suspected Sellis would not be overjoyed to have me along on her training. But this — what a thing to know. And what power to have.

“I wish to learn this,” I finally said. “I am ready to learn it.”

“You think so? You can understand why it is necessary to keep the Singers’ secrets? You understand why our duties, and the ones you saw at Conclave, are necessary?”

My thoughts returned to the Conclave’s horrors. I recoiled against the expected answer. There must be other ways. Things untried. Then I remembered Lith’s dark, cracked form. I considered how to make myself more secure, so that I did not become an offering myself.

I would silence my questions about Conclave. This was what Rumul asked of me. To keep Singer secrets, to help the city.

“Yes.” I was determined.

“No going back, Kirit. Accepting this skill means accepting all of what the Singers do. Going deeper into our secrets. Including what you saw during Conclave. When the time comes, you will fight all comers to protect the secrets of the Spire.”

“I will never throw down Elna or Ezarit.”

He agreed. “As long as you hew to Singer law, we will not need to hurt Ezarit.” He paused. “Or Elna.”

There it was. My trade. Not what I had planned at all when Nat and I flew through the night. I’d come then to take what was already mine. Now I agreed not just to serve the Spire, but to become it.

He brought out a bone pot of caustic ink and marked my left hand himself, right there. A small spiral, a coil. Like wind in the Gyre. His fingers gripped my hand. The touch of his brush burned, and I bit my lip hard.

No further ceremony signaled my passage. With one mark, I became even more Singer-bound.

“When you are ready, you will challenge in the Gyre,” said Rumul. Just then, Sellis entered the alcove. She stopped and stared at us both, as if she’d caught us in an unwelcome secret.

Rumul smiled at her. “Kirit will learn how to fight in the Gyre. To fly at night. To better guide skymouths. Then you will both be ready to challenge.”

Sellis’s entire expression changed. “We will be ready.”

I swallowed. They spoke in circles.

Rumul turned back to me. “Wik says you are doing well, but you must do this last thing quickly. Before Allsuns. The need is great. It will not be easy. And you must learn to fly as we do.”

His eyes met mine, and I sensed he was daring me to succeed in my father’s place. Or to fail on my own. For him, I was an experiment. No risk to him, only to myself. The higher I went, the further I could fall.

Sellis watched me closely, silent questions hovering behind her eyes. She complimented my quick rise to third-stripe and compared her hand mark with mine. They were identical.

“Each council member has their own style,” she said, touching hers.

“What is that ink they use? It burns.”

She did not take her eyes off her mark. “A Singer secret. They mix it with something from the skymouths. That’s what stings and what makes the marks turn silver.”

I winced at the thought of gaining tattoos around my eyes like Wik had.

I didn’t see him that day. I did not know when he learned of my rise. Instead, I climbed down to the novices’ tier and watched the class. They practiced towers, much as I’d learned them at Densira for the wingtest.

When the Magister dismissed them, the novices broke left and right around me. Only Moc and Ciel greeted me.

“Why do they do that?” Around Sellis, the novices gathered and chittered happily, telling her about everything that happened in the Spire. She had the benefit of many eyes. I had two extra pairs only, both trained on me.

“You’re unpredictable,” Moc said. “You do unusual things. You couldn’t keep the Silence.”

“You’re tall.”

“Your voice is still strange.”

I raised a hand. “Enough, thanks.” I saw things more clearly. Even after showing them how quickly I could learn to be like them, the young Singers-to-be were still uncomfortable. I was different. The Spire didn’t like different. “You and Ciel aren’t bothered?”

Ciel tilted her head and laughed. “You’re new. Everything in the Spire is old and always happens up down up down. You came in sideways.”

They liked me for precisely the reasons the others didn’t. The twins were tiny and strange, but they were the eyes and ears I had in the Spire. I needed them.

But they’d begun disappearing for days, even before the Conclave. When they returned, their temples bruised, their eyes bloodshot, I asked what had happened, and they tried to explain.

“Training,” they had said. “We train to hear better.”

The day after my meeting with Rumul, I found out what they meant.

* * *

Wik sent a whipperling to the twins and me. The message chips it carried listed a tier and an alcove. Two levels down.

When we arrived, breathing hard from rushing, I caught a glimmer of metal. Wik held an ancient tool in his hand. Its base was the same shape as the bruises that sometimes appeared at Ciel’s temples: a deep purple blotch overlaying her soft, honey-colored skin.

My fingertips brushed the cold lenses that hung from my neck. Wik frowned at me. “You have a disadvantage, Kirit. You do not know how to listen.”

This was unfair. I tried very hard to listen. I had already heard the city whisper and roar.

Noting my frown, he shook his head. “When they are very young, Singers begin training in a different kind of listening. Some use what they learn to better hear the city. Others, to keep track of signals when we fly and fight. Still others use what they hear to see better.”

The last pulled me out of my study of Ciel’s hair, her complex braids.

Seeing better with hearing?

“Close your eyes,” he said, coming to stand very close behind me. I twisted to look at him, and he raised his eyebrows and waited.

I closed my eyes.

Wik pressed one end of the metal tool against my temple.

In the darkness, I felt the pulse of his breath against my cheek. He didn’t speak.

A cool strip of silk was placed over my closed eyes and tightened. I tried to pull away, but Wik held me firm. “Don’t move.”

Then a sound of metal hitting metal. So much metal, I thought as the tool began to vibrate against my head.

“Listen,” whispered Wik.

I strained to do what he asked. I heard nothing beyond a muffled giggle on the other side of the room.

“Listen with your skin, your bones,” Wik said as he struck the metal rod again. This time, a hum echoed deep within my skull.

“Now we will change something,” he said. “See what the echoes do.”

I heard robes swish and Ciel tell Moc, “No, that way!” Then silence again. Then that sound vibration as Wik hit the rod pressing into my head. Echoes and vibration surrounded me. They had a slightly different shape, flatter, faster than before, but I couldn’t figure out why.