Updraft Read online

  Around me now, our garden was reduced to branches and leaves. Over the low bone outcrop that marked Aunt Bisset’s balcony, I saw a glimmer. A bored cousin with a scope, probably. The wind took my hair and tugged the loose tendrils. I leaned out to catch one more glimpse of Ezarit as she passed beyond the tower’s curve.

  The noise from Mondarath had eased, and the balconies were empty on the towers all around us. I felt both entirely alone and as if the eyes of the city were on me.

  I lifted my chin and smiled, letting everyone behind their shutters know I wasn’t afraid, when they were. I panned with our scope, searching the sky. A watchman. A guardian.

  And I saw it. It tore at my aunt’s gnarled trees, then shook loose the ladder down to Nat’s. It came straight at me fast and sure: a red rip in the sky, sharp beak edges toothed with ridge upon ridge of glass teeth. Limbs flowed forward like thick tongues.

  I dropped the scope.

  The mouth opened wider, full of stench and blood.

  I felt the rush of air and heard the beat of surging wings, and I screamed. It was a child’s scream, not a woman’s. I knew I would die in that moment, with tears staining my tunic and that scream soiling my mouth. I heard the bone horns of our tower’s watch sound the alarm: We were unlucky once more.

  My scream expanded, tore at my throat, my teeth.

  The skymouth stopped in its tracks. It hovered there, red and gaping. I saw the glittering teeth and, for a moment, its eyes, large and side-set to let its mouth open even wider. Its breath huffed thick and foul across my face, but it didn’t cross the last distance between us. My heart had stopped with fear, but the scream kept on. It spilled from me, softening. As the scream died, the skymouth seemed to move again.

  So I hauled in a deep breath through my nose, like we were taught to sing for Allmoons, and I kept screaming.

  The skymouth backed up. It closed its jaws. It disappeared into the sky, and soon I saw a distant ripple, headed away from the city.

  I tried to laugh, but the sound stuck in my chest and strangled me. Then my eyes betrayed me. Darkness overtook the edges of my vision, and white, wavy lines cut across everything I saw. The hard slats of the shutters counted the bones of my spine as I slid down and came to rest on the balcony floor.

  My breathing was too loud in my ears. It roared.

  Clouds. I’d shouted down a skymouth and would still die blue-lipped outside my own home? I did not want to die.

  Behind me, Nat battered at the shutters. He couldn’t open them, I realized groggily, because my body blocked the door.

  Cold crept up on me. My fingers prickled, then numbed. I fought my eyelids, but they won, falling closed against the blur that my vision had become.

  I thought for a moment I was flying with my mother, far beyond the city. Everything was so blue.

  Hands slid under my back and legs. Someone lifted me. The shutters squealed open.

  Dishes swept from our table hit the floor and rolled. Lips pressed warm against mine, catching my frozen breath. The rhythm of in and out came back. I heard my name.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw the Singer’s gray robes first, then the silver lines of his tattoos. His green eyes. The dark hairs in his hawk nose. Behind him, Elna wept and whispered, “On your wings, Singer. Mercy on your wings.”

  He straightened and turned from me. I heard his voice for the first time, stern and deep, telling Elna, “This is a Singer concern. You will not interfere.”

  2

  SENT DOWN

  The Singer came and went from my side. He checked my breathing. His fingers tapped my wrist.

  Elna and Nat swirled around the table like clouds. I heard Elna whisper angrily.

  When I found I could hold my eyes open without growing dizzy, Nat had disappeared. The Singer sat at my mother’s worktable. His draped robes puddled on the floor and obscured her stool. As the sun passed below the clouds, he sat there fingering a skein tied with blank message chips.

  In the dark, his knife scraped against one bone chip, then another.

  The room felt tight-strung, an instrument waiting to be played.

  With the sunrise, Densira neighbors began clattering onto our balcony. They brought a basket of fruit, a string of beads.

  “The tower is talking,” Elna said. “About the miracle. That it’s a skyblessing.”

  The Singer waved away our visitors. He positioned a tower guard on the balcony.

  Occasionally, the guard peered through the shutters and shook his head, like kaviks did when they were molting. “Lawsbreaker,” he muttered. He told any who would listen how stupid I’d been.

  I caught pieces of his words on the wind.

  “It came right for her. The fledge stood out on the balcony with the lens of that scope glinting in the sun. Should have gobbled her up. Would have shot her myself, attracting a mouth to the tower like that.” He waved our neighbors away. “Don’t waste your goods on her. She’s not skyblessed. She’s bad luck. Should tie enough Laws on her that she’ll rattle when she moves.”

  The people of Densira did not listen. Elna scrambled to find places for everything they brought.

  She took the guard a cup of tea. “Luck was with her, Risen. The tower has luck now, because of Kirit. The skymouth fled.”

  The Singer cleared his throat loudly. Elna jostled the cup. Nearly spilled the tea. The Singer looked as if he wanted to have Elna swept from the tower and silenced.

  I tried to say something helpful, but my voice rasped in my throat.

  “Don’t try to speak, Kirit.” Elna returned to my side. The Singer glared again, then rose, muttering about needing a new sack of rainwater. He must have decided to keep me alive a little longer.

  She propped me up. Around me, the bone lanterns’ glow cast halos and small stars against the pale walls. The rugs and cushions of the place I’d shared with my mother since the tower rose were swathed in shadow.

  Elna wrapped me in a quilt, tucking the down-filled silk beneath me. Instead of warming, I shook harder. The Singer returned and held my wrist between his thumb and forefinger. He reached into his robe. Took out a small bag that smelled rich and dark. Metal glittered in the light.

  A moment later, he handed me a tiny cup filled with sharp-smelling liquid. It burned my throat as it went down, then warmed my chest and belly. It took me a moment to realize I wasn’t drinking rainwater from my usual bone cup. He’d given me a brass cup so old the etching was nearly worn away. It warmed in my hands as the glow crept up my arms. Calm followed warmth until I was able to focus on the room, the smell of chicory brewing, the sound of voices.

  Elna disappeared when the Singer glared at her a third time. He gave me a stern look. Waited for me to speak. I wished Ezarit sat beside me.

  “They think you are skyblessed,” he said when I did not speak on his cue.

  I blinked at the words and closed my eyes again. Skyblessed. Like the people in the songs, who escaped the clouds, or those who survived Lith.

  The Singer’s tone made it clear that he thought me nothing of the sort.

  “Your example will tempt people to risk themselves. We have Laws for a reason, Kirit. To keep the city safe.”

  I found that hard to argue. I sat up straighter. My head pounded. I looked around the empty tier, at the lashed shutters, anywhere but at the Singer standing before me, his hands folded into his robe.

  “You are old enough to understand duty to your tower. You know our history. Why we can never go back to disorder.”

  I nodded. This was why we sang. To remember.

  “Yet you are still part of a household. Your mother is still responsible for you. Even while she’s on a trading run.”

  He was right. She wouldn’t learn what I’d done until she flew close enough to the north quadrant for the gossip to catch up with her. I imagined her sipping tea at a stopover tower. Varu, perhaps. And hearing. What her face would look like as she tallied the damage to her reputation. To mine. Bile rose in my throat, despite the ca
lming effect of whatever was in that cup.

  The Singer leaned close. “You know what you did.”

  I’d broken Laws. I knew that. I’d attracted a skymouth with my actions. A punishable offense. Worse, I drew a Singer’s attention, which could affect Densira. Councilman Vant, Sidra’s father, would sanction me, and my mother too, for my deeds.

  But that fell below the Singers’ jurisdiction. They only dealt with the big Laws. I sipped at the cup to conceal my confusion. Cut my losses. “I broke tower Laws.”

  He lowered his voice. “Not only that, you lived to tell about it. How did you do that, Kirit Densira?” His eyes bored into mine, his breath rich with spices. He looked like a hawk, looming over me.

  Elna was nowhere to be seen. I looked at my fingers, the soft pattern on the sleeve of my robe that Ezarit brought back from her last trip. Stall, my brain said. Someone would come.

  I met the Singer’s gaze. Hard as stone, those eyes.

  “I am waiting.” He spoke each word slowly, as if I wouldn’t understand otherwise.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “Why I am still alive.”

  “You’ve never been in skymouth migration before?”

  I shook my head. Never. Wasn’t that hard to believe. Everyone knew the northwest quadrant had been lucky.

  “What about the Spire? Never to a market there, nor for Allsuns?”

  Shaking my head repeatedly made the room spin. A low throb gripped the base of my skull. My voice rasped. “She said we’d go when we were both traders.”

  He frowned. Perhaps he thought I lied. “Don’t all citizens love to visit the Spire’s hanging markets at Allsuns, pick over the fine bone carvings, and watch the quadrant wingfights?

  I shook my head. Not once. Ezarit never wanted to go, nor Elna. They avoided the Singers more than most. How could I convince him I told the truth?

  “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  I shook my head a third time, while pressure pounded my temples. I did not know, and I felt nauseated. I could see no way for me to get away from this Singer. Even seated, he loomed over me, tall and thin and sour-faced. Despite this, his hands were smooth, no deep lines marked his face beneath the tattoos; he might not have been much older than me.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say. I went on the balcony. A skymouth came. I screamed, and it—”

  I stopped speaking. I’d screamed. The skymouth had halted. Why? People who were close enough to a skymouth to scream died.

  The Singer’s gaze bored into mine. His frown deepened. He turned away from me and looked at the balcony. Then back to me.

  “There are those who can hear the city all the time. Not only when it roars. They learn to speak its language. You know that, right?”

  I bowed my head. “They become Singers. They make sure we continue to rise, instead of falling like Lith.” Our Magister, Florian, had taught us this long ago. If tower children became Singers, their families were rewarded with higher tiers; their towers with bridges. But the Singers themselves were family no longer. Tower no longer. They severed themselves from city life; enforced Laws even on those they once loved. Nat’s father, for instance. Though I’d been too young to see it, I’d heard stories. I imagined now a Laws-weighted figure thrown to the clouds. Arms and legs churning in place of missing wings. Failing. Falling. Tears pricked my eyes.

  This Singer took my arm and squeezed hard. I locked my teeth together to avoid crying out. His fingers pressed into my skin, dimpling pale rings around the pressure points. “Kirit Densira, daughter of Ezarit Densira, I place you under Spire fiat. If you reveal anything that I say now to anyone, you will be thrown down. If you fail to tell the truth, you will be thrown down. Do you understand?”

  My head throbbed worse than ever, and I leaned hard against his grip. “Yes.” Anything to get free of this man.

  “Some among the Singers can speak to monsters.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are five people in the city who can stop a skymouth with a shout. All Singers. Except one.”

  He stared at me. He meant me. I was the fifth.

  “Kirit.” He paused. “You are not skyblessed.”

  I bowed my head. I hadn’t thought so.

  He released a breath. Scent of garlic. “But you could be something more. Someone who helps to keep the city safe in its direst need.”

  As my mother did. I raised my eyebrows. “How?”

  “You must come into the Spire with me.”

  The way he said it, I knew he didn’t mean for a visit. I jerked backwards. Neck and shoulder muscles tensed into a rejection of him. And yet he held me. Tried to shake me out of it. No.

  I would not leave the towers. I would not go into the Spire. Not for anything.

  Traders flew the quadrants freely, making elegant deals. They connected the city, helped weave it together. Better still, traders were not always tied to a single tower and its fate; they saw the whole city, especially if they were very good, like Ezarit. That was what I wanted. What I would choose when I was able.

  I stalled. “I have already put my name in for the next wingtest.”

  His turn to shake his head. “That hardly matters. Come with me. Your mother will be well honored for your sacrifice. Your tower too.”

  Sacrifice? No. Not me. I would ply the winds and negotiate deals that let the towers help one another. I would be brave and smart and weave beads in my hair. I would not get locked in an obelisk of bone and secrets. I wouldn’t make small children cry, nor etch my face with silver tattoos.

  I yanked my arm away. Scrambled off the table, my knees wobbly, toes tingling. Two steps, and I hit the floor. I tried to crawl to the balcony, to get to Aunt Bisset’s, to get back to Elna.

  The Singer grabbed me up by the neck of my robe. His words were soft, his grip fierce. “You have broken the Laws of your tower. Endangered everyone here. Some think you’re skyblessed, but that will wear off. Others think you are a danger, unlucky.”

  “I am no danger!”

  “I will encourage these thoughts. What then? Soon the tower will grow past you. Your bad luck will sour your trades and your family’s status. You will be left behind. Or worse. You will be Densira’s pariah for every bad thing.”

  I saw my future as he drew it. The tower turned against me, against my mother. Ezarit, living within a cage of shame.

  “As a Singer, you will be respected and feared. Your mother and Elna and Nat will be forgiven your Lawsbreaks.”

  The household. He would punish Elna and Nat too. And Ezarit. For my decisions. I needed to bargain with this man. How did I do that? How would Ezarit have done it? I groped for memories of her trading stories, for how she would have turned him away. She would have tried to trade, to haggle. If she’d nothing to trade, she’d bluff.

  “I am too old to take.” I’d never heard of someone nearly at wingtest being taken by the Singers.

  “You are still a dependent in the eyes of your tower.”

  “In that case,” I said, resisting the urge to argue his point, “my mother would never permit this.” I was certain of that.

  “Your mother is not here. Won’t be back until nearly Allmoons.”

  “You can’t take me without her permission,” I said. “It says so in Laws.” And once I have my wingmark, Singer, I will be an apprentice. Able to decide my own path. Singers do not take apprentices from the city, except for egregious Lawsbreaks. I coughed to conceal my shudder at that possibility. Then I straightened. “Ezarit would bring down a storm on the Spire so great, you’d be begging the clouds to pull you back up.” I yanked my arm from his grip.

  The Singer smiled, all but his eyes. My skin crawled. “Singers are more powerful than traders, Kirit. Even Ezarit. No matter what your mother thinks.”

  I drew a deep breath. “I will not go with you.”

  The Singer straightened. “Very well. You would be unteachable at this age if you did not
desire to become a Singer anyway.”

  I’d changed his mind. I couldn’t believe it. It felt too easy.

  “You will stay in Densira until the wingtest. Then we will talk again.” He rose and reached back to release his wings. He was leaving. Then he paused. Frowned. The tattoos on his cheeks and chin creased and buckled.

  “Of course,” he said, “you did break tower Law.” He drew a cord from his sleeve, tied with four bone chips. “The tower councilman has sent you, Elna, Nat, and your mother a message. Vant is of the opinion, which I have reinforced, that you are in no way skyblessed, no way lucky. That the guard must have driven away the skymouth with noise and arrows. That you must be censured severely to avoid future danger to the tower.”

  I took the chips. Freshly carved. Approved by Councilman Vant. Two were thin, light: Nat’s and mine. We were assigned hard labor, cleaning four tiers downtower.

  I gasped. That could take well past the wingtest to finish.

  Heavier still were Elna’s and Ezarit’s chips. They felt thick. Not the thickest, I knew, but still true Laws chips. Permanent, unless Ezarit could bargain with Vant so that he let her untie them.

  As promised, they were punished for my deeds. For both the Lawsbreak and for refusing the Singer. Nat and I could miss the wingtest. We would certainly miss the last flight classes, when the Magister did his most intensive review. I could lose my chance at becoming an apprentice this year. Perhaps forever.

  My head ached, and I tried hard to swallow. I knew I could have been thrown down for endangering the tower. But censure was bad too. Everything was wrong now.

  And not just for me. I held Elna’s, Nat’s, and my mother’s fates in my hand.

  The Singer raised his eyebrows. Would I change my mind? Would I give in and go with him?

  I stared back at him. Swallowed. Shook my head. Densira seemed to fall silent as we stared each other down.

  “My name is Wik. Remember it,” he said. “I will find you at Allmoons, Kirit Densira. By then, you will want to come with me.”