Fran Wilde - Updraft

When I looked ahead, I saw Dojha, from my flight class, standing with one of my cousins at the end of the bridge. Next to two artifexes. By the tower marks tied in their hair, I suspected they were from the south.

Dojha looked nervous. She reached to greet me with a shaking hand. “You are welcome here, Singer,” she said. Sidra’s mother’s muttering continued in the shadows. They thought I could not hear her.

But I was a Singer now, for better or for worse. I was expected to show my old tower a Singer’s power.

“You do not keep silence here. You have no reverence for the city,” I said. “I will turn back.” The old Kirit Densira shouted at Kirit Spire, who’d just spoken. How could I turn back? This bridge would help Elna.

Someone in the crowd gasped. If a Singer turned back, the bridge would be taken down and strung elsewhere.

The sound of a slap echoed through the tier. My hand stretched as if I had struck the mutterer myself. No more sounds came from the back of the tier.

Sidra emerged from the shadows, her face flushed. I expected her to glare at me, but she smiled instead.

Dojha looked at me. “Do you wish this person given Lawsmarks, Singer?” Her eyes held mine. Afraid. For her bridge. For her friend’s family. Now that I had the power to tie weights, how would I distribute it?

How, indeed.

Sellis would already have pulled the markers from her robe. I hesitated. I’d exercised Singer power, and now I had to enforce the consequences. All our lessons said so. Tradition dictated.

I shook my head. “I was shown mercy, once. I entrust the artifex to assign a marker if needed. Densira can teach the noisy one another way.”

Dojha’s look of concern turned to relief. “We will ensure it.”

I made the final step from bridge to tower. Sellis and I put on our wings, on opposite tiers.

Dojha stepped aside to give me room, saying, “You honor us, Singer.” So formal.

I remembered her trying to help before the wingtest. I’d thought she and Sidra had been teasing. Perhaps I’d misread. They had concerns of their own. Sidra especially. And now we had all changed so much. The distance between me and my former tower suddenly felt overwhelming.

I fell back on tradition and Singer training, saying only, “Your bridge is sturdy and well built. Please make good use of it. You honor the city and the Spire when you do.”

Dojha and my cousin stepped out onto the bridge, and Densira began to celebrate.

I looked around me, at my old tower. Familiar faces looked back with unfamiliar reverence and fear. I did not see Elna. Nor Ezarit.

The bridge ceremony complete, I waited for Sellis to join me for our second duty. The awkward silence stretched out until Sellis landed on the tier.

I tried to clear my throat, find my voice. I could not.

Finally, Sellis said, “We have another duty to discharge, and the light is fading. Where is the mother of the young man who challenged the city?”

My burden pressed at my chest. Wings for Nat. Another silk banner.

Councilman Vant stepped forward to greet us. He bowed so low his furled wingtips nearly touched the ground. I accepted his greeting with a bow of my own, then continued searching for Elna in the waiting crowd.

“She is below, Singer,” Vant said, hurrying behind me. “She asks that you bring the wings there.”

Sorrow bloomed. I stopped walking. A near silent hiss from Sellis, and I was under control again.

“It is tradition, if the family wishes. We will go down to her,” Sellis said to the crowd. She and I secured our wings and bowed to the remaining citizens on the tier.

“On your wings, Singer,” said the guard who had once stood watch outside my tier, who had called me Lawsbreaker. He bowed to me now.

Sidra stepped to the ledge and pressed an apple into my hand. She didn’t look me in the eye. She wore apprentice Magister robes, blue-gray with a stripe of gray. So much like an acolyte’s robes, I was caught by the similarities.

Sidra’s respect, and that of the guard, was Singers’ due. Sellis didn’t blink at it. It was her birthright. It was part of what I’d wanted when I’d agreed to fly the challenge. But there, on my former tower, it felt hollow. I was grateful for the silence I was required to keep, for tradition’s sake. But I wondered at all the changes in Densira. In myself. At how open and unprotected the tower seemed to me now. At the strangeness of a center core in a tower, rather than a Gyre and walls.

Sidra bowed to Sellis as well. Macal stood behind Sidra and looked at her proudly. Their hands clasped when she finished her bow. Another new thing. So much change.

Sellis nudged me, then turned away from the crowd. Do not linger.

She opened her wings and left the tier’s edge, then circled, waiting for me to show her where to go. I looked at my former councilman, my former family and flightmates one last time, then unfurled my wings, stepped from the balcony, and rode a breeze down to Sellis.

* * *

The tier we sought was far below the bridge and speckled with the garbage of those above it. There, living quarters were pressed a little closer to the edge by the growing central core than they had been six months ago.

Elna stood at her cookpot, stirring. Did not hear us clatter onto her balcony. The scent of what she cooked was new to me. Something with a heady spice.

Finally, she turned. The light of the setting sun behind me etched her face in stark relief, her wrinkles and jowls. As she navigated towards me, her fingertips brushing the room’s spines and furnishings, I realized she could not see me in the glare. The skyblindness had grown much worse. A thin silk tether around her waist kept her from the edge of her balcony. Like a child. She kept one hand on it.

“Elna,” I whispered, and caught her hand as she passed near.

“Kirit,” she whispered back. Then, “You honor me, Singer.” Tears filled her near-sightless eyes.

This and her simple formality broke me nearly in two. I did not honor her. I was begging her forgiveness.

Sellis’s whispers grew louder as I held Elna’s hand. Cannot linger. Must return to the Spire before dark. “Kirit. Tradition,” she finally snapped. I let Elna’s hand go, gently.

From behind a screen, a voice sounded. “Is she here?” The tone was familiar, but had a sad edge.

Then Ezarit stepped around the screen. My mother, here.

She stared at me. Her eyes held worry, a little fear. I stared back, all my words gone from my mouth. She should be out trading. Not here. This was why Singers clung to tradition. To Laws. Surprises conflicted too much with duty.

Sellis seemed confused. She looked back and forth between the two women, trying to understand my alarm. In the time it took her to form the words “who’s this?” Ezarit had rushed forward and wrapped her arms around me, wings and all.

Now I understood: Elna had stayed below not because she couldn’t rise but because of my mother, because my mother wished to see me. I stiffened, but Ezarit did not let go.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered.

“Kirit,” Sellis finally managed.

I ignored Sellis. My arms came up from my sides on their own, and my palms brushed Ezarit’s shoulder blades. I thought of the scar that ran across her collarbone. From her fight with Civik.

“I met him,” I said into her ear. “You let him live.” I couldn’t follow your example. My shoulders jerked with a single sob. I locked my arms against it.

She whispered, so quietly I could barely hear, “I should have told you everything. I thought I was protecting you.”

“Tradition!” Sellis pulled hard on my wingstrap. “You will bring shame on us. Rumul will have you enclosed when he hears you cannot keep silent. Cannot act properly.”