Fran Wilde - Updraft

Elna paused in her work, and her face brightened. “Where?”

The tiny grotto had grown very crowded. I stepped closer to her and put my hand on her shoulder. But I turned to Wik. “Whose side are you on?” I put timbre into my voice. As I’d been taught. How could someone know all that Wik knew and not do something to stop it?

Elna touched my hand. “We trust him, Kirit.” It was almost enough.

“Why?”

Tobiat chuckled and gestured to Elna. “Trust,” he said. “Can’t remember why.”

My softhearted, gentle second mother. The woman who never picked a fight, who was always two steps ahead of us as children. Her chin hardened as she ran fingers along her only son’s broken limbs, ably adjusting bandages and applying salve as if he had just tripped while running in Densira.

“I went looking for Naton after Conclave. I left Nat with your mother, who was pregnant with you. I spent days at it, all through Allsuns. Broke my eyes, it turned out. Too much sun. Slept in a hang bag down every tower around the Spire for days in the winds. But I never found Naton. I found Tobiat. Hanging by a wing from an abandoned tier on Bissel. Birds had already started pecking at one of his eyes.”

She turned her face towards him, smiling fondly. “I don’t know how long he’d been there, but he was alive, and he was wearing a Singer robe.”

I held my breath. I’d been right.

“I figured if I could make him well, he might tell me of Naton’s last days.”

“How did he get there?”

Elna quieted and turned to Tobiat. Waited.

Tobiat cleared phlegm from his chest and spat. He coughed for a few seconds more, then drew a long breath.

“Challenge.” He cackled.

The sun was going down. Tobiat would babble until it came up again. I tried to hurry him. “Who did you challenge?”

Nat’s eyes were open; he was listening too. Tobiat spat again, hitting his first gob with the quivering mass of the second. “Young Rumul. For Naton.”

“Why did Rumul want this so badly?”

Wik stepped in. “A Singer historian found a set of bone plates hidden far downtower. They showed Singers using skymouths to hunt in the clouds, and Rumul saw the potential. There was not enough dissent to stop him. Not then. The council brought in an artifex. Called it tradition. Before the Rise, they said, Singers had trained skymouths to defend the Spire. They stopped long ago. Rumul thought it necessary again.”

My jaw hung open. Those? To defend the city? No. That wasn’t what Wik had said. He’d said the Spire.

“How long have people been trying to change this?”

I’d asked Wik, but Tobiat answered. “Too long. Too slow.”

Wik nodded. “Rumul had the votes in council and strength in the Gyre. He had many of the windbeaters too. With some towers rebelling against tithing and Conclave especially, Rumul has fought hard to keep order. Singers were afraid to have another Lith. He gained more supporters. Inside and outside the Spire.”

The southern towers, I thought. Where the Spire got its apples. Its muzz.

“We have only recently been able to shift the balances,” Wik continued.

All those people. The towers.

I turned to Nat. “What were you willing to die for to have spoken aloud?”

And he looked at me full on, for the first time since I’d found him here. His eyes looked harder, and sadder, than I’d ever seen them. “You mean, what did I risk killing a friend for?” he said.

I winced, but stood firm. Waited for him to answer.

“I wanted the city to hear what Naton knew, and what Tobiat knew, but couldn’t say.” He paused. His voice was deep and firm. Determined. “I wanted them to have to sing it from the towers. That the Singers kept skymouths. Used them against the city.”

No one would have listened to someone like Tobiat.

Except someone had. Nat had. Elna had.

Nat said, “After you disappeared and Singers told everyone I’d attacked the Spire, they weighed me down with Laws. I had to hide during Conclave, or they would have taken me.” He paused and drank the tea that Elna held to his lips. “I went so far down. Into the clouds, Kirit.”

Into the clouds. The nerve that had taken. The desperation.

Nat kept talking. “What I found down there, the city needs to know that too.”

I looked at Wik, who shrugged, confused.

“In the clouds, I had to hide often, letting gryphons and skymouths that were the size of whole tiers pass by.” Nat swallowed. “It was dark down there. I stumbled around a lot. Nearly fell off the edge of a tier more than once. Then I tripped over a nest of them. Hiding. Tiny ones, little bigger than my hand.”

“Them?”

“Littlemouths. They live in the towers. But they’re not like the ones that migrate. They’re small. No sharp teeth. They climb. Can’t fly. They eat waste and weeds. Not people.”

“Then they’re not skymouths.” I thought of the baby skymouths in the cages. Those had been big. They’d had teeth.

Nat reached into a basket by his side and pulled out his hands. His palms formed a seemingly empty cup. “Look at it. Feel it.”

I turned to Wik, questioning. He began to echo at Nat’s hands so that we could better see what he held. I joined him. There was something soft in Nat’s hands, for all that they looked empty. I reached out a fingertip and touched an eye ridge, the crease of a mouth.

The creature was something like a skymouth, a baby skymouth, but much smaller. Large, wide-set eyes, a ridge of glass teeth, but not the sharp edges that gouged and tore. Grinders.

The creature nestled in Nat’s hands.

Wik was doubtful. “Another kind of skymouth?” He crossed his arms and frowned.

Nat shook his head.

Tobiat made a sound that was part yelp and part laughter. “Same kind.” He stared for a long time at Wik.

I turned too. “What does he mean?” I watched Wik’s expression shift from confusion to understanding. To horror.

He spoke in a rush. “The Spire’s skymouths are bred there.” He reached to touch the tiny creature. Hesitated and pulled his hand back. “It’s not night and day. The city needs the sinew. Needs the bridges. Singers have kept a few skymouths for that purpose since the Rise. Rumul argued in council to breed more, bigger mouths. They got more than they bargained for.”

Elna bent her head.

“Why was he allowed to do this?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was the council truly that weak? The Singers that easily led? Why had no one challenged?

“Not everyone knows. The skymouths aren’t exactly easy to see down there, and so their true number goes unobserved. The shouters and the council know. There’s been gossip, but there have been accidents too. And the council has to be careful. Rumul’s beaten every challenge so far.”

“Terrin.”

Wik frowned. “Others too. Civik, long ago. Rumul is too good in the Gyre and has many windbeaters on his side. He bribes them well. When Rumul kept winning, we decided to try to work for change in different ways.”

“Sabotage.”

“And changing minds. It’s slow and dangerous. There are more dissenters among the younger Singers. A few of us try to blunt the effect of Rumul’s policies.”

“Why can’t you tell the towers? Or kill the skymouths?” My outrage brought the pitch of my voice close to a scream.

Wik smiled weakly. “The needs are too great. Rumul has consolidated too much power and removed most of the strong-willed among the council. Only Viridi opposes him openly, and then very cautiously. She — we — have been trying to secure windbeaters we could trust, biding our time. Too much so. Rumul’s trade with the wealthiest towers has enhanced the Spire’s food; the towers themselves enjoy more bridges, nets too, though they fear the skymouths as everyone does. The wealth keeps Rumul popular. The fear keeps the towers under his thumb.”