Fran Wilde - Updraft

Rumul’s glides grew shorter and shorter as he narrowed the horizontal and vertical gaps between him and Terrin. Then he shot forward on a fortunate gust. The smoke of the windbeaters’ rot gas preparations had tinted a breeze just enough for him to see it.

Below, the windbeaters drums and the pulse of their wings punctuated the battle at increasing speeds.

“What is it,” Lurai asked, coming to stand beside us, “that Terrin wants to say?”

Sellis shushed him. “The Gyre will prove whether it’s worth hearing over council’s advice.” She shook her head. “Terrin was Rumul’s friend.”

I wondered if there was a song for fighting a friend in a challenge, but I kept my mouth shut.

Sellis kneaded her robes with her hands. She saw me notice and pressed her palms to her lap. “Rumul won’t let him live. But he won’t let Terrin fall while still alive either; at this point, that would be shameful. For both of them.”

Back at Densira, wingfighters fought together in a tangle of jewel-colored wings and glass-spiked feet, of bone and fists and blood and netting. But that was child’s play compared to the Gyre. This was the maelstrom.

Terrin tired. His arms shook in his wings; sweat poured down his face.

Rumul was lucky with the gusts, for sure. One caught and lifted him towards Terrin. He took a wide swipe with his knife and almost tore one of Terrin’s wings. Terrin turned just in time.

They whipped by our tier, rising, mouths grim, knives sharp. Light spilled over them as the sun broached the Spire’s apex. Rumul blinked, dazzled for a moment. Long enough for Terrin to take advantage and get above the head Singer.

Sellis stuffed her hand between her teeth. I leaned forward, watching.

Terrin dove for Rumul, lips parted to shape a high-pitched shriek.

Singers in nearby galleries covered their ears, wincing in pain. I winced too, but could not turn away. Rumul growled and flipped an impossible turn in the tight space, timed to catch a windbeater’s gust perfectly. He grabbed Terrin’s wing.

With a jerk, he tried to tear the wing from Terrin’s back. This angled his own wings against the wind, and he plummeted, dragging Terrin with him.

In a moment, the two men were one body, falling together. Terrin landed a lucky strike with his knife, and blood bloomed on Rumul’s robe near his shoulder. Singers were on their feet, mouths open, soundlessly watching. Sellis among them.

Then Terrin’s second wingstrap gave way and his left arm pulled, dislocated, from the wing. Rumul rose, four wings bellying with wind, two at his back, two in his hands.

Shrilling with pain, Terrin grappled for a balcony. His fingers scraped the tier as he passed us. The gallery leaned forward as if they too were falling.

A grinding sound. A new gust pulled at us. A gate had opened at the base of the Spire’s occupied tiers. Terrin was sucked out still shrieking into the bright city sky.

The gate slammed as Terrin’s voice faded into nothingness.

The Spire held its breath as Rumul gathered his strength and rode the remaining Gyre winds upwards to the top of the Spire.

On the upper balconies, two council members reached out to pull Rumul onto the tier. They addressed the galleries. “It is decided.”

The galleries replied, “It is decided.”

Robes rustled as Singers turned back to their alcoves, order restored.

The council members led Rumul away from the top balcony to tend his wounds. The windbeaters dropped their oversized wings to the floor with a clatter.

In the moment after the beaters stopped channeling the winds, an ear-popping reversal swung the Gyre currents. The force pulled at my cheeks and my robes. Older Singers leaned away from the Gyre to brace themselves.

Ciel, standing too close to the edge of the gallery, tripped and fell forward, over the edge and into the chasm. Her tiny training wings fluttered half open and useless.

She screeched, breaking the post-challenge silence of the Spire. Lurai and I rushed back to the galleries and looked down. A half tier below, Ciel clung to the wall, looking up with wide eyes.

Sellis shook her head slowly. She looked exhausted. “Clumsy.” The word echoed around the Spire like a death rattle. There were few worse names to be called in the city. One thing the Spire had in common with the towers. Moc ran to my side and looked down.

“Singers can’t fall in the Gyre,” he whimpered.

I didn’t think. “Help me,” I said as I stepped to the edge. Sellis and Moc followed. Lurai hesitated, then joined us.

“Hold my feet.” I loosed my wingstraps enough to loop one end around a bone post.

If I fell, if Lurai or Sellis let go my feet, I would fall past Ciel, knock her off her perch, and we would keep falling inside the Spire until the end of the world. “Tighter!”

The commotion I made attracted more attention than the fallen child. Behind me, the sound of running feet; above me, whispered words like tradition from the higher tiers; across the Spire, louder murmurs. But I was upside down now, my robes gathered around my waist and my under linens showing pale and undyed as I reached.

“Farther out!” I yelled, and Sellis and Lurai edged closer. I felt Sellis adjust her grip on my ankle and tensed, but she wrapped both hands more firmly, and I stopped dropping. My fingertips grazed Ciel’s hair.

“Reach up, Ciel,” I said as calmly as possible.

The fierce little girl whimpered. Her fingers clamped tighter around the wall of the perch. She looked up at me.

“You can,” I said, sounding more sure than I felt. “Just one hand.”

She shook her head again, but I could see her thinking about it. She knew she must.

Behind and above us, an older voice said, “Let her go. Singers do not fall in the Gyre,” but Moc was whispering, “Please,” softly, not wanting to frighten Ciel or me. I was aware by now that no Singer had jumped into the Gyre and glided over to help. If a novice did not learn to fly the Gyre like a Singer, it seemed they let you fall.

At least in the towers we had tethers for the unsure. Magisters who caught our friends and pulled them back from the clouds. Here, Ciel only had me.

“I won’t let you fall, Ciel.” I whispered it, but she heard.

First one finger, then more peeled away from the wall. They were rubbed with soot, the pads dented from her tight grip. The fingers hovered against the wall as Ciel checked her balance on her other hand, the place where she’d found to plant her feet.

Sturdy for the moment. Her hand shot up and grabbed mine, then slipped, and I clasped it tightly. Her foot slipped farther. She whimpered again. I tightened my grip and gritted my teeth hard.

Ciel swung from my hand, a tiny, winged pendulum. I dangled from the tier. Lurai and Sellis began hauling us both back up.

“If you were Singer-raised,” Sellis muttered. She stopped. “You and your tower-fed bones.”

If I’d been Singer-raised, I’d have been slighter, for certain. But I also wouldn’t have leapt to save a clumsy child.

They pulled, and I held fast to Ciel, and soon I was back on the flat landing of the tier, my ribs and stomach scraped where they’d struck the edge. Ciel grabbed the ledge and pulled herself up and over, then lay next to me, gasping.

“Clumsy,” Sellis said, and stalked away.

Ciel took my hand, and we both looked over the edge of the Gyre, into the dark depths.

Lurai leaned back against a wall, catching his breath. Moc knelt next to his twin. Took her other hand.

The galleries began to clear in earnest.

“Don’t tell,” Ciel said, her voice rough. “I forgot windbeaters sometimes pull the wind, after. I was distracted.”

Moc emphasized every word: “They never did it like that before. That was too much.”