Fran Wilde - Updraft

I am not a Singer, yet. But I cannot lose.

He whirled around, furious again. “I thought you were dead! But you’re not! You’re strong — we nearly starved these months, with the Laws they gave me. Where are yours?” He was crazed, yelling. I saw the chips hanging heavy on his wrists. His arms were pale past the wingstraps. His hands gripped the bow hard. He was tiring, too weak. But desperate. I didn’t have much time.

What could I do to shock him, make him concede? I could tell him the truth. I could sing it.

I cast my voice to carry on the drafts. I sang The Rise to Nat. The real Rise.

The city rises on Singers’ wings, remembering all, bearing all,

Rises to sun and wind on graywing, protecting, remembering.

Never looking down. Tower war is no more.

For a moment, the galleries fell silent. Then a shout of outrage broke through the windbeaters’ drums, the swirl of wind. Rumul’s voice. “Stop this!”

I continued to sing. Hoped Nat could hear me. Would listen.

A voice on a nearby tier joined me. Then another.

Always rising, never failing. The city forever.

Rising together. Rising as one.

Nat’s eyes grew wide as the words filled the Gyre and he heard the difference from what he’d always known as unassailable fact. This is why there are Singers, Nat. To protect tower from tower.

I didn’t stop singing until he shot at me again, wildly, his last arrow nicking my wing.

“Stop this! Kill me already,” he screamed. He threw the bow. It spun in the air, hit the wall, and plummeted into the Gyre. I heard a cheer from the galleries.

Nat’s straps bit white against his shoulders where his robes had slipped. His face flushed deep red. Buoyed by the song, I circled in long arcs, looking for a way to knock him into the nets above the pens, to cut his wings open. To win without killing him. In the galleries, Singers leaned forward to see better. The fight had gone too slow for the windbeaters.

I smelled the rot gas before I saw the balls of flame. Heard them rise last of all. With a whoosh, one hand-sized ball flew up the tower, then another.

“Monsters,” Nat shouted, as a gout flew close to his face and rose out the top of the Spire. I smelled singed hair.

I could push him right into a rot gas ball and his wings would burn, but Nat would fall, alive.

I tried not to think about how Rumul would judge me for sparing Nat. I doubted it would be well.

I twisted in the jumbled wind. “I’m not trying to kill you, Nat!”

“You’ll let me go, then send a skymouth to kill me,” he yelled. “Tobiat warned me about Singers!”

“No! Tobiat is damaged! He’s…” I spun lower, losing altitude, trying to think. Nat followed me down, battling the gust patterns, and something suddenly made sense. “Tobiat was a windbeater.”

“What does that mean?”

“He knew Naton. He watched Naton work in the Spire! He’s the traitor.”

“Shut up, Kirit!” Nat dove for me, hands outstretched, trying to grapple my wings and drag us both down. We plummeted past gallery walls carved with Singers falling, wound round with flames.

We were well down in the Gyre now, too close to the novices and windbeaters throwing flaming rot gas. I heard Moc shout for me.

I fought my way to an updraft, hoping Nat would follow me, that he was strong enough to follow me.

He did. Barely. His pale wings filled with wind.

“I will tell you what I know,” I said. “But you must give up then, you must concede. Promise?”

He whistled. Our long-ago flight signal. Agreement.

I was about to break the Spire’s rules, but perhaps it would work. Nat would be left alive. I pointed down. Spoke fast. “Your father built pens for the Spire, Nat. That’s what the chips mapped. He built pens that would hold—”

I never got to finish my sentence. Two windbeaters began a new pattern. The Gyre’s winds spun me round and knocked me into Nat. My knife dragged across his wing.

Over the roar of the wind, the galleries screamed. And then the wind pulled us apart. I heard a gate open and braced myself for more wind. The windbeaters angled their wings anew, and I was borne up on a massive gust.

A separate gust sucked Nat towards the open gate.

I reached for him, tried to hook his wings, but my fingers could not span the widening gap.

He spun limp, his wings folding as he lost control and was flung into the wide-open sky.

But my wings filled. I was lifted by an opposing current. I’d won. Or the windbeaters had.

The challenger was defeated.

The galleries began to sing. Tradition. A second time through The Rise, this time to welcome a new Singer. Their song, which until that moment had been my song too, lifted higher, and the wind swept me up. I was truly theirs now.

I was a killer. I knew no greater pain.

* * *

“Come up, Kirit Spire!” Rumul shouted from the balcony.

Wik had to reach out with a hook and pull me onto the council tier. He let me lean against him while the council argued in a corner. Had I succeeded? The battle had been won, but by whom? And the secrets I had shared. The traditions I had shattered.

To my wind-deafened ears, their debate was just more noise. Then they parted, walked towards me, the full council following Rumul’s lead.

“Welcome, Singer,” he said.

The caustic sting barely registered as Rumul marked my right cheek with a new symbol for winning the challenge: a knife. Honoring my murderous deed. I let it burn, unflinching. I heard Nat’s scream again, an echo inside my head as he disappeared.

Now I was a Singer, marked with the death of my challenger.

Now I was Spire, locked within its walls no matter where I flew.

I released my wing grips and let my arms hang at my sides. My feet touched the bone floor of the balcony, and I wavered at the edge until Wik pulled me by the robe, farther into the tier.

A visibly pregnant Singer brought me water in a brass cup. Cold in my hand and against my lips. I could not swallow it without great effort. The Singer took the cup back and put a bowl in my hands.

“Eat,” she said, her brown eyes trying to look deep into mine. “The Gyre’s exhausting. You’ll feel better soon.”

I stared at the bowl. Stone fruit in honey. The sweet smell made my stomach growl, but my fingers gripped the bowl’s rim and did not reach for the fruit.

A gray-haired Singer patted my shoulder and handed me a clean gray robe. Another brought a sack of herbs and salve for my scratches and cuts.

Wik removed my novice wings, negotiating the straps and harness over my deadweight arms. I stared at his cheeks, his markings. He’d flown the Gyre. Faced a challenger. Many challengers. How did he go on after?

I didn’t ask, and he didn’t meet my eyes.

Behind the Singers tending and congratulating me, a low bone table held more of the stone fruit and two additional brass cups. Yes, I remembered. Three of us would fly today.

Even now, Sellis looked over the council balcony, waiting to fly. Vess, a novitiate an Allmoons older than Sellis, paced in the passageway between the tier’s galleries and large alcoves. We were on the newest council tier. The highest. The outcroppings of bone here were lightly carved, with areas marked for new carving by novitiates.

The noise from the galleries shifted from a discussion’s rumble to anticipatory hush. Sellis waited to be called forward, standing on intertwined symbols carved in the floor: sacrifice and duty.

Rumul stood beside her, right hand light on her shoulder. He looked my way and gestured to a fourth Singer elder, then turned his attention back to his acolyte.