Updraft (11 page)

Magisters and Singers leapt from the plinth, flying fast, kicking out with their tailskirts, gliding the drafts to get to him. The latter set their wings, pulled from their finger harnesses, and reached arms lined with silver tattoos towards him like prayers.

I knelt at the plinth's edge, Beliak and Aliati on either side. We peered over. “Please no,” I whispered. Not Nat.

The Singers outpaced the Magisters. Even Macal could not keep up. Singer Wik reached Nat first and caught him by the winghooks. Nat's spin dragged them both down. Beliak made a choking sound, and I grabbed Aliati's arm with numb fingers. Then the Singer's broad wings stopped their fall. When they rose, Nat dangled limply, out cold from the spin. The Singer's left arm bulged with the strain of lifting him, until he removed a rope harness from his waist with his right hand, then double-glided Nat back to us, suspended like a child.

The other Singer rescued another student from the group, and Magister Dix struggled to right the rest of the flight. The group limped back to the plinth and made tangled, exhausted landings.

Singer Wik dumped Nat in a puddle on the plinth's woven surface.

“This one didn't watch the others,” Dix said, as if she wasn't certain anyone should have rescued him. “Naton's boy.”

There was a hush from the Magisters. Finally, Florian, our Magister, bent to Nat and shook him awake.

Nat retched and grabbed at the air, his face flushed and angry.

“You're all right,” Florian said roughly. “You were rescued like a fledge, but you're fine now.”

Nat retched again. He'd failed Group. He wouldn't pass the wingtest this year. But he climbed to his feet. The plinth bounced as he took a step. One wing hung crooked from its strap. The other, battens split, silk torn, drooped against his shoulder.

But he had lived. He had not fallen through the clouds. I reached for his hand, and he jumped at my touch, then held tight.

The volunteer who had careened into Nat, the hunter from Mondarath, had plummeted fast and hard. The Singer who had gone after him returned empty-handed. He landed, ashen faced, then pointed up and intoned, “Jador Mondarath fell in service to the city. Look up to watch his soul pass above. We do not look down in mourning.”

More loss for that tower.

The blessing ended, and students and Magisters gathered into tower groups one last time. Dikarit stood off to the side, having passed without trouble. Sidra stood, panting, her face ashen. Dojha and I juggled relief and joy with sorrow. Nat, still gripping my hand, turned away from us, eyes on his feet.

A brass-haired Singer intoned a benediction. The last words from The Rise:
We all fly together.
Even in death. “Go in service to the city,” she said.

Singer Wik spoke after her. “Wingmarks will be distributed at tomorrow's wingfights, before Allmoons.”

Magisters and students raised confused questions. This broke tradition. Wingmarks were exchanged for the four test marks now, not tomorrow.

The Singers did not explain. They repeated the change. The guild members murmured “Singer's right.” As if that explained things.

“Must be because of the fall,” Aliati said. Her face was marked with tears. Her tower, her hunter.

“I encourage you who receive wingmarks tomorrow to respect the city's Laws, and those of you who have not passed to try again,” the older Singer said, then turned and jumped from the plinth without waiting for a response. Her dove-gray wings momentarily blocked the sun as she soared back to the Spire.

Singer Wik and the third Singer followed without a word to anyone.

Our flight groups lingered on the plinth, confused. The test didn't feel over. I began to worry that the Singers would declare no one had passed, but then I thought about my flight and grew calmer. I'd passed. I knew it. Traditions had been broken, all formality lost, but I'd passed. I caught Beliak's eye, then Ceetcee's. Waved to them as their groups headed back to Wirra and Viit.

When I realized that Nat had dropped my hand and walked to the plinth's southern edge, my heart sank. So caught up in my own worries. Shame on me. I joined him as he peered over the edge, then at the Spire in the distance.

“It wasn't your fault.”

“Bad luck,” his voice rasped. He unbuckled his left wing, broken beyond repair, and slid the strap from his shoulder. He hung it over the edge of the plinth and dropped it.

My heart ached for him. “Next Allsuns, Nat. You will pass.”

Florian waved us back to the plinth's northern side, and I pulled Nat after me. We would fly back to the tower of our youth together.

Using winghooks, Florian carried Nat. Nat cringed with shame. His remaining wing was secured to the Magister's chest.

They glided away from the test plinth. Sidra sulked behind them, muttering to Dojha. My cousin and I followed, trying to read the changes on the horizon.

I would take my old wings to Viit and trade whatever else I could find to have them make Nat a new wing. I smiled sadly. That would help. But Nat wouldn't have wings for this year's Allmoons. He wouldn't be able to fly in the wingfights or join a hunt.

Meantime, Singer Wik would return to talk with me. But I would have my wingmark by then. I hoped that would be enough to carry me far from the Singers' reach.

Ahead of me, Sidra grew more strident and incensed.
Not my fault,
I heard.
Dix will regret this.

I felt a twinge of empathy for her, and even worse for Nat. They'd have to repeat the wingtest. Sidra's family would be embarrassed, though they wouldn't have as many difficulties as Nat and Elna would. Sidra would have to live by her father's rules for longer. Knowing Councilman Vant, that could be why she was raging now.

Sidra caught me looking at her and glared back at me. Embarrassed, I distracted myself by thinking of more ways to help Nat get back in the air. Ways to avoid going near the Spire until I was a well-off trader in my own right. My barely formed plans shredded like clouds when I spotted a figure waving from our balcony.

Ezarit. Home. Her lenses pressed my cheeks as I smiled. Then they fogged as the seal broke with my skin when I frowned. She'd almost made it in time. Perhaps she had seen some of the group flight. Perhaps she saw Nat's fall.

If Ezarit had been home in the morning, she would have seen my dive. She would have told me what it looked like. We could have shared impressions, like a team, like the group I'd just worked with. Like the people who'd helped her deliver the medicines to the southeast.

Instead, she'd flown one way, and I'd flown another. So much sky had opened up between us. The skymouth and the Singer, the wingtest and Nat's fall filled the space.

I glided the distance to Densira, and Ezarit's form grew clearer. She'd put her glass beads back in her hair. The top of the tower danced with light to welcome me home. But silence waited there too, taut like a net.

With a wave from Magister Florian, I broke from the group and went to her.

 

7

HORIZON

She met me on the balcony and caught me like a child come in from a first flight. Swung me round. She held me at arm's length.

“You've grown. How is it that you are still growing?”

I hadn't grown. It had only been a few days since she left. It had been forever.

Why was she greeting me as if nothing had happened? I grew stiff in her arms, fidgeted like a trapped bird.

Her eyes were soft and golden, fringed with long lashes. On her wind-chapped face, her cheekbones bloomed madder and rose.

She touched the chips I'd tied to my wings. Her face fell into worry. “No wingmark? They must be debating results.” Her lips moved as she counted four full chips:
Laws, City, Solo, Group
. “But you passed!”

I nodded. I had so much to say, my lips were sealed by the pressure of it all. And against speaking any of it. I smiled at her and let my eyes speak instead.

“I know how you feel,” she said. “When I passed the wingtest…” She looked into the distance, thinking. “I was so over the sun about it. Higher than anyone. My mother would have been so proud, then.” She returned to me, saw me. “Just as I am.”

She hadn't seen Nat fall. She didn't know.

I should have told her then, but I couldn't put words to it. I opened my mouth and closed it again.
Everything is all right
, I thought as hard as I could,
Tell me of our plans, describe our future like you did the trade run so many weeks ago, with eyes glowing and fingers shaping air into promise and power.
I wished those words between us.

She waited as well, her head tilting to one side, eyebrows rising. Quiet buoyed us for a moment while we believed we understood each other. Then silence grew from quiet, expanding up and out, hardening. The silence began to push us further apart.

Ezarit tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. The Laws chip tied to her wrist flashed white. “Household member broke Laws.”

My doing. A hero of the city weighted with Laws.

I wondered what Councilman Vant would ask in exchange for making the chip go away. As I opened my mouth to ask, she began to speak at the same time.

“I have some surprises.” She pulled me to the table, handed me a package. A cloud of silk wrapping, bound by complex knots, soft and light in my hands. “But tell me everything,” she said. I opened my mouth. Stopped. Pressed my lips together.

“Don't keep me waiting, who was your Group tester?” She did not want to talk about the Laws chip either. She was distracting me with banter, another trader trick. This made me more tense, more worried. Still, I could answer her, and distract her too. “My tester was almost Dix.”

She leaned forward, her eyes searching mine. “But?”

“But Sidra protested being tested three times by Mondarath's new Magister, and Nat and that Magister pushed for changes. Calli was switched for Dix. I got Magister Viit. We flew true.” I didn't speak of Nat's flight. Somewhere far below us, he was finding the words to tell Elna that his father's wing was lost, that he'd fallen. But I could not tell Ezarit.

“I gather Sidra will be serenading her father with her woes.” My mother frowned and picked at my test marks. She sighed. “And for Solo?”

“Mondarath. The new Magister. He flew strangely, but I managed to keep up.”
I did more than that,
I thought.

“Strange, how?”

“Like a Singer.”

Ezarit's eyes narrowed. “How many Singers have you seen flying?”

“We've watched them, haven't we? At Allsuns? And Allmoons? And the one who came here to get you? And after—” I stopped. I'd come treacherously close to the things I could not allow myself to talk about.

She blanched. “After?”

I could not say. I could not tell her.

“Three Singers attended the wingtest.”

“Three always attend the wingtest.” She would not let go of my slipped words. “After what? Which Singer?”

“I've only seen three up close. They were all at the wingtest.” I was not lying. Not yet.

She relaxed, but the distance between us expanded. So many things we were not saying. The silence of our mutual homecoming deepened. I furled my wings properly to have something to do with my hands. Reached to pull the lenses from around my neck. They felt cold on my fingers. I held them out to my mother, who touched them fondly, but did not take the strap from my hand.

“You keep them.”

She was trying to mend things. “They're yours. You need them to fly. Your good luck.” They weighed heavier now, burdened.

She smiled slowly, thinking I'd be thrilled. “I can fly without them too. I had very good luck out there.” Her smile grew, thinking of the adventure. “I want you to have them. When you're a trader, they'll come in handy.”

The moment she said “trader,” something tight in my chest released with a great whoosh of air. I could hear the tower's sounds again, the flapping of Allmoons banners on the balconies.

She smiled again to see me relaxing. “Tell me more,” she said. I shrugged from my wings as she pulled me inside.

I looked around our quarters for things that had changed. A tower chip with Vant's mark sat on the table. She owed him now. She followed my eye to the chip and cleared her throat. “We'll discuss that later. Tell me about the wingtest.”

I told her as much as I could, about Solo and Group. About Nat, about his fall. Her hand went to her throat.

“I'll make them down a basket.”

“It's not something you can fix with goods,” I said more sharply than I meant to. I did not want to fight with her. I wanted her to help me figure out how to make things right.

But she waved her hand, nervous, and turned to her panniers. “It is what I can do. Poor Nat. Poor Elna.”

She fussed with her trade goods as if she wished to pull a new wing from one of the baskets. She opened and shut containers, sighing. Turned back to me, gesturing to the wrapped package I still held. She arched an eyebrow. “Open that while I think. More surprises later.”

I didn't want surprises. I wanted flying panniers and quilts with deep traders' pockets. A wing for my friend. I untied the complicated wrapping to find a new robe, the markings embroidered and dyes done in layers and shades of green. No pockets. I put it down on the table; I'd wear it for Remembrances, tomorrow, after the wingfights.

“I thought it was pretty,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“And with that a promise to take you to the Spire, once you've made your first trades.”

A chill crossed me, like a shadow. It must have shown on my face. Not the reaction she expected.

“Kirit, you've wanted to fly the city for so long. What has happened?” She frowned.

I pressed my lips shut, knowing that everything would tumble out, and she'd be furious at the Singer. She'd argue with them, be ruined.