Updraft (7 page)

“You sent her a message,” I said. It was not a question.

Elna raised her eyebrows. “She needed to know. And you need your strength for tomorrow. Though I couldn't tell her everything.” The Singer's warning.
You will not interfere.
If I knew Elna, she'd hinted anyway.

We ate greedily. Nat's fingers dove for the goose fat, and mine scooped up a thick, roasted leg. I saw his frown. He'd wanted that too.

Elna's plate was empty. “Go on, eat.” She made a shooing gesture with her hands. “You worked hard. You're testing tomorrow.” I pushed the goose leg to her plate and picked up a wing instead. She tried to say she wasn't hungry. When I ignored her, she tore into the leg.

“When I'm apprenticed,” Nat said through a mouthful of goose, “we'll eat like this every night.”

Elna chuckled. “And you'll need new wings each Allsuns, like Councilman Vant.”

“Won't. Ever.” Nat reached for the water sack and helped himself. He filled Elna's cup, then splashed water in mine. “I'll be the fastest hunter in the sky. Bring down everything I see.”

“Let's hope you don't bring down a friend, then.” Elna ruffled his hair. She cracked the leg bone and sucked the marrow out. Nat did the same with a thigh. I set my wing down. Never crack a wing, not even if you might starve.

We were the opposite of starving. We sat at the table near the balcony and watched the lights go down in the highertowers. The stars grew bright in the sky, and the moon bellied above the clouds, full enough to turn the city silver.

“Clear sky,” Elna noted. “Good for tomorrow.” She stepped away from the table and pulled two bundles from behind the sleeping screen. Our wings.

Nat whooped and spread his out on the floor, then went in the back for a mending kit to shore up a worn seam.

Elna looked sad as she handed me my wings. “Your mother's delayed in the south quadrant,” she said. “The tower council brought these down when they delivered the goose.”

I shrugged off my disappointment and tore into the bundle, thinking of the green and gold swirls. My new wings. But when the bundle came undone, I found my old wings, newly mended. Elna laid a skein of message chips on top. From my mother. She patted my hand and left me with it.

Kirit,
the chips read,
I should be back in time for Allmoons. Southwest is complicated. Meantime, do your best. I won't have you test on new wings after all that happened. You will use your old ones. Liras Viit has mended them well. Be brilliant. You will rise like the sun.

Nothing more. Old wings, a mother away, and a wingtest for which I was ill-prepared. I should be flying from the towertop on gold and green to meet the test, with Ezarit cheering me on.

Alone. I would do this alone. Ezarit hadn't returned. The southwest was more important and demanded much, I knew.

A thought took my breath away. Would she return before the Singer came back? Perhaps she didn't want me as apprentice after all. Staying away was an easy way to say so.

My dusky wings with their patches and stains felt far heavier in my hands than they used to. How could I rise if both my tower and my mother were determined to weigh me down?

With that, I snapped back to reality.
Chin up, shoulders back, Kirit.
I would fly the wingtest well enough to keep Wik at bay and take top marks, so that Ezarit would see I was the best apprentice she could choose. And then I could choose to go with her or make my own way.

“Beautiful stitching,” said Elna, running her fingers over Liras Viit's patchwork. She patted Nat's shoulder, then mine. “You could work on your mending skills. Never know when you'll need them.”

Nat wrinkled his nose, but continued to shore up his wings. I barely hid my expression; I hated mending. I'd trade for my garments, like Ezarit did. After tomorrow.

Tomorrow, we'd be questioned on city Laws and history. There would be a solo flight, then a group flight with students from other towers and citizen volunteers. Group was the most important test: flying among strangers without killing anyone. I had to do well on it all. I could not falter, could not let Vant or Wik or anyone keep me from passing my wingtest.

We'd spent years preparing. Our Magister had drilled us on each element. And tried to dissuade Nat and me from showing up because we'd spent the final days before the test cleaning downtower.

Worse, I had yet to go into open sky since the migration. The thought, even though the Singers had declared the skymouths gone for now and the skies safe, made my dinner feel like a pannier full of guano.

Elna gave me a knowing smile. She remembered what it was like. “Stakes are high. Passage on the first try will make you seem lucky. It will balance the tower's censure.” She was trying to make us feel better. “Even on the second try, there are plenty of professions that will still want a strong flier.”

But no one wanted you if you were unlucky, or if you happened to attract skymouths to your tower.

“Sidra said some of the group volunteers are hunters,” Nat added. He was a fine shot. Good with a knife, too.

“If not the hunters, the guards,” he told me while he double-stitched a seam with silk thread. “Sidra said she'd talk to her father if I wanted to be a guard. I would line my wings with glass and patrol the skies.”

I barely heard him. As I'd scrubbed the tower, I'd let myself daydream too. My life as a trader. I knew he'd done the same. All that stood between me and that future was one test. Now, holding my old wings, I imagined the roar of air around me as I plummeted and failed. It would be worse than being sent downtower in a basket, because everyone who could spare the time would be watching the wingtest, with lenses. If I fell out of my turn, they would see me.

Everyone but Ezarit.

Allmoons was in two days, which wasn't long. But that would be too late. At least she wouldn't see me fall.

If I could just practice my rolls and climbs once more. If my voice was prettier.

Too dark to fly now. Wingtest started after dawn. Instead, I practiced in the main room. I unfurled my wings, slipped my arms into the straps, stretched my fingers to the harnesses that controlled curvature and, to some extent, lift. The woven harness that held my feet when I flew dragged on the floor with a soft
ruck-ruck-ruck.
I began twisting this way and that, angling my hands to curve the wings' tethers, ducking my head to let the air curl around me.

“You look like you're dancing,” Nat said. I jumped. He'd been behind the screen, reading.

“Practicing. You don't?”

He shook his head. “Magister said I'm a natural.”

The lanterns grew dim as the oil in them ran out. Elna came in from the balcony and kissed the tops of our heads. She whispered, “Don't stay up too late,” and went to bed. Outside, the full moon finally cleared the clouds again, flooding the balcony and the outermost rooms with pearl-gray light. Dark wings chased bugs between distant towers, and the closest towers sparkled under the star-glimmered sky. It was a soft night. Almost as beautiful as an Allmoon.

Someone in the tower had picked up their dolin and was plucking at the strings. The chords drifted down like raindrops.

“Come on, Kirit. We know everything we need to know already. We finished the punishment. Watch the stars come out.”

I growled quietly. Nat wasn't nervous anymore. Me, I had everything riding on this test. If I did well, the Spire would have no claim on me. Ezarit would know my worth to her. My luck would be restored. Tomorrow I could begin training to become a trader like my mother. Or I could disappear.

Nat was right; he was a natural. I'd always had to work at it.

I knew I'd pass the first part, Laws. I'd memorized all the songs. The test focused on accuracy, so the fact that my voice sounded like scourweed on bone couldn't hurt me. I hoped. I worried most about Group. Anything could happen then. Sometimes everything did.

I closed my eyes and spun, feeling my old wings fill with the slight breeze. The battens supported two layers of silk that spread and furled like bats' wings. The wingframe could lock in position to free the hands, or a skilled flier could use the grips woven into each wing to rake and angle the wingfoils during a glide. I felt the grips with my fingers, the leads of the silkspun ropes that ran to eyebolts drilled at the tips of the wingframe. Singers' wings used tendon instead of silk. For us, silk had to do.

I imagined myself diving and turning in a clear blue sky. I imagined leading a group. I had to do well. I had to focus. But instead of the rules for upwind group flight, or the different traditions of various towers in the city, I saw the strange patterns on the bone chips Tobiat gave us. My arms dropped to my sides. My concentration had failed me. No more flying tonight.

When I opened the shutters, I found Nat sitting on the balcony, looking at the moon through a hole in one of the age-worn bone chips—Naton's plans. I hesitated, one foot on the threshold, then stepped out.

Nat turned and peered at me one-eyed through the carved chip.

“What are they, do you think?” he said.

The chip made Nat's brown eye seem flat and enormous, with extra sclera. Like a skymouth's. I pushed that thought out of my mind. The sky had been clear for days.

I steadied my voice. “No idea.” Tried to think of things a bridge artifex like Naton would want to make. Something woven or knotted. “Probably not a telescope.”

He lowered the skein. “Not a good one anyway.”

I stood well back from the edge of the balcony, my wings furled. The night air was cold. A large bat dove from one of the towers, chasing something. Stinging bugs, hopefully, or a jumping rat. Those were a menace.

Nat followed the bat with his eyes. “Good hunter, that one.”

The pause in conversation stretched out. He waited for me to say something. I scrambled for a topic that didn't include Singers or skymouths.

“Do you want to stay near Densira, Nat? After Allmoons, I mean.”

He nodded. “I want to make sure Ma's taken care of. Besides, the best hunters in the north are Densira. What about you?”

I swallowed. Few knew that my mother was thinking of other towers. That would be a betrayal of Densira. And no one could know of the Singer's threat. Or how I might escape it.

“I want to fly with Ezarit. The best trader in the city.”

He looked at me sideways. “She's not trying to apprentice you to another tower?”

“We're a team,” I said. He wasn't wrong. Everyone understood that it was sometimes necessary for the city to shift apprentices between towers; but not everyone wanted to be the one to go. I wasn't tied to Densira any more than my mother was, so I shrugged.

A week ago, I'd dreamed of seeing the rest of the city. Of living on a tower with bridges connected to a close ring of neighbors. I bet it was a lot more interesting than out here, where everyone knew everything about you before you were even born. I knew it had to be better than living behind the Spire's wall.

I tried to push the Spire and its Singers from my mind, only to return to worrying about the wingtest. “Want to practice Laws?”

He was sighting with his bow, out across the night sky. Aiming for bats, which was bad luck. The skein was back in his pocket.

“Nat!”

“What's it like, do you think, for animals up here?” he mused. “There's a whole lot of eat or be eaten. And they have to do a lot of work. Just like us.”

“What's the alternative?”

“We do what the tower council tells us, and the guilds. And especially the Singers. No one asks why anymore.”

“No one wants to go back to what life was like in the clouds, before the Singers.”

“Who says we would? I have a theory…”

Nat always had theories. That way lay danger. “What would you do if no one told you what you had to do?”

“I'd hunt! And wingfight. When I've got my wingmark, I'll fight for Densira. With a new set of wings.”

Before I'd moved uptower, Nat had talked about training more whipperlings and expanding to kaviks. The wingfighting was new. Sidra's influence again.

“Do you care about anything but trading, Kirit?”

I couldn't think of one thing I wanted more. If not the power of trading itself, the feeling of connecting towers, knowing I was helping people. Knowing I made it happen. Besides, trading didn't require much singing. Not even socially. Perfect all around.

There were other things I enjoyed at Densira. Watching the wingfights. And carving, though I hadn't done much of that since I was young. Even minding our silk spiders. But trading—finding something of value and exchanging it for something people I knew needed? That was fun. Ezarit loved it. Even when she wasn't flying through a skymouth migration, she'd said it was a good way to rise higher in the city.

Perhaps someday I'd leave Densira and become a trader for a more central tower. Perhaps I'd return and place a bet on Nat's wingfighting team. All I had to do was pass wingtest with full marks.

At the back of my mind, a new thought rose. I cared about one thing more than flying the city: escaping the net the Singer had set for me.

I hummed a Law, trying to get Nat to test me. He finally responded. “That's Kamik. No going against the decision of the Singers, the council, and your tower.” He was right. “Fine. What about this one?” He sang a soft, low tune, almost a whisper.

“Nat, that's awful.” He'd sung the dirge for someone lost to a skymouth. He'd sung me my father's death. And almost my own as well. I didn't have to stay out here for that. I grabbed fistfuls of my robe and prepared to sweep dramatically back into Elna's quarters and bed.

“I'm sorry.” He ducked his head. His voice grew deeper when he was nervous. “That wasn't funny.” He grabbed one of my sleeves and tugged at it, as he'd done when we were children. His hand caught my arm and squeezed. “Really. Sorry.”