Fran Wilde - Updraft

He took a long loop of knotted rope from the wall near Civik’s alcove. The ladder wells had been filled in below this level. Going below the windbeaters, I remembered, was forbidden. We headed for the Gyre’s edge. Wik tied the rope to bone hooks carved in the wall and tossed the loop into the depths of the Spire.

We climbed down the rope, far into the darkness below the occupied tiers, until we reached a thick set of nets. Multiple layers of them.

Wik touched my arm. Whispered, “Stay very quiet.” Then he walked slowly towards the center of the Gyre, across the nets.

An acrid smell grew stronger as I followed his path. The nets rose and fell with our motion, but also with an odd pressure from below our feet. I wobbled and fought hard to keep my balance. When I looked down, I could not see anything but shadowy ropes and more darkness.

Wik reached the center of the netting and pulled on a series of knots. An access gate opened to the space below. He lowered himself through the hole, tugging on my sleeve to guide me, then closed the gate behind us.

I relaxed my hands, which had tightened into fists. Tried to calm myself. I would not regret demanding to know. This was where I’d wanted to be.

It wasn’t where I wanted to be at all.

We stood in the center of the nets and Wik said, “Kirit, you must control your voice in here, as we’ve practiced. You must not make any mistakes.”

Something moved beyond the nets. Something big.

The hair on my arms rose.

“Do not shout. Do not speak. Just echo.” Wik’s lips touched my ear, his voice sounded almost inside my head.

My eyes adjusted, slowly. I could now see where Wik’s face was, his cheek a different shade of darkness than the shadowed walls around us. I saw the quick flashes of his teeth.

But that was all. Wik was right. This was not a time for using my eyes.

His voice was patient, and urgent. “You will understand soon. Just echo.”

I was still learning how to echo and hum; the combination was difficult. Now I hummed through my nose while clicking and tried to remember to breathe. The movement on the other side of the net stopped.

“We would have had to do this anyway, to complete your training,” Wik whispered.

The completion of my training was skymouth shouting. I stopped echoing. “Is a skymouth caught in the nets?”

I imagined a mouth opening beside me, tentacles reaching for me, with only ropework between us.

I tried to refocus, to corral in my thoughts. Breathe and echo.

I heard the shape of something beyond the nets. Something large, in motion. I turned and echoed again. More of the same shape, slightly smaller. I could not breathe.

“Not one skymouth,” Wik said, his voice close in my ear again. “Many.”

I stopped humming. Darkness surrounded me. Wik’s hand brushed my arm.

I bit back a scream.

“Many?” My voice rose, and there was a rasp on the other side of the net. Motion. Faster. The ropes bulged towards us.

Something tugged at my hair. My robe. Something that slid and grabbed and pulled. My entire body went gooseflesh. I could not breathe at all.

Wik hummed, and the sinister motion slowed. The tentacles receded. My breath returned, but my mouth was dry. It took time to rebuild my echo. For a moment, I was overwhelmed by the darkness, blinded with fear.

“We are safe here,” Wik said, stopping his echo once mine had started again. “The nets will hold.”

I kept echoing, hearing the coils and tentacles, the long bodies of the penned skymouths that my hum was defining around us. When they moved, the echo blurred into a confusion of roiled air. “Why?” The nets went dark again when I stopped echoing to ask the question. But even in the dark, I could see the pattern of the nets. I had seen it before, on Naton’s bone chips. This was what he had carved. The blueprint for these nets. A skymouth pen.

“Some of the skymouths here will be used for their sinew, for bridges. Some give us the ink that lines their glands,” Wik said, lifting my hand and putting his thumb on the mark Rumul had given me. Wik hummed again, and I joined him. The movement around us stilled.

After a moment, he tapped my hand and whispered, “They sleep. Your first test, passed.”

“Why keep so many, once you’ve caught them?”

Wik didn’t answer at first. Then, “Why, indeed. You should ask Rumul. The problem isn’t that we are keeping them. Singers have always kept one or two for training.”

I waited for him to continue. He remained silent.

We stood at the center of the Spire’s secrets. Nat would have loved this. “Wik. Tell me.”

“It has been decided.” His voice was firm. “We should go back up. Check on Ciel.” He tugged on my sleeve to draw me away, as if he regretted having revealed any of this.

I did not wish to be left alone at the center of a skymouth pen in the depths of the Spire, surrounded by teeth and tentacle, maw and want. But I planted my feet more firmly, refusing to move. “Tell me now.”

“Terrin lost his challenge. If he had won…” Wik’s voice drifted off. “We had hoped … But Rumul and the council demand silence, even among ourselves.” He tried to pull me towards the rope gate, to the exit at the pens’ net ceiling.

I still refused to budge. This was information I needed. “How can I finish my training without understanding this?”

He cleared his throat. Spoke in a hush. “Some skymouths are bred here, by Singers. And they have been, for a long time.”

New skymouths, on purpose. My skin crawled as if I were covered in writhing tentacles. My hands pushed at Wik’s chest, as if I could have driven what he’d just said back inside of him. “Why would anyone want to make more?”

“See for yourself,” Wik said. “Carefully. Few Singers realize they’ve gotten more than they bargained for.”

I turned and clicked softly, not wanting to wake the huge beasts. The sound vibrations translated to large shapes, caught in pens around the Gyre. So many. More than the city could ever use for bridges.

In a corner closest to us, I heard something different: a shape like a pile of worn cloth, but softer. Almost deflated. Those were skymouth shapes, no longer moving. Stacked neatly, ready to be turned into sinew and ink for the Singers.

There was an order to the cages. A purpose that was the darkest side of the Singers. And Naton had helped them make this.

I felt sick to my stomach. “You are farming them.” The realization took my breath away, and I stopped clicking. The nets went dark.

“The skins are as caustic as the ink. We can only use the undersides of tentacles and the bladders, and only very carefully at that. The rest gets thrown down. Or fed to the others.”

“Who does the work?”

Wik turned his head up towards the windbeaters’ tiers. His profile was lit by the dawn just coming into the Spire, elaborate tattoos across his cheeks thrown into relief. Like a fine carving. I looked away, back into shadows.

“Those windbeaters who are able see to most of it, led by a few Singers who can make sounds that the skymouths can hear and who wish to do the work. Terrin was one.”

The sick, crawling feeling built.

“But Terrin knew something he wanted to share with the city.” My voice was calm, but my mind raced. Skymouths. Nat wouldn’t have believed this if he’d seen it himself.

As my thoughts jumbled, the skymouths began to stir again. Another rope dropped from the darkness above. The nets bounced as feet marched across the skymouth pens, quickly enough that the beasts inside began to stir angrily.

Wik hummed to calm them as the gate opened. Then Rumul descended into the pens, crowding us amongst the nets.