Updraft Read online

  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.”

  I didn’t pull away; he didn’t let go. Like old times again. His hand was cool as the night air. He stood a full shoulder taller than me now, and his arms had become thickly muscled. Mine had gone the other way, wire and sinew. It was the way we flew. I focused on speed, and he tried to work with the bow. To shoot from the wing, he had to hook his straps from the elbow and glide, then aim and shoot. He’d been practicing.

  Stars speckled the darkening sky. One raced across the night, fire-backed. “Look up,” I whispered. Too late. It winked out of sight. I touched my eyelid, then pointed skyward. Even a falling star deserved respect. We saw where its spirit went, not its body.

  Nat released my arm and we sat apart together in the shadow of Elna’s blackberry vines. The leaves smelled sharp in the cool. He eyed me.

  “You’re still worried.”

  That was an understatement. I was terrified. “It’s those old wings. Liras Viit did a good job mending them, but they’re not as wide as the new ones. And I’ve grown some.” I steered away from additional what-ifs, other, more secret, worries.

  Most of our class had broken in their new wings in the past few weeks. Wings that were built to carry adults, strung tight enough to execute complex turns. The past few days of Florian’s class had likely been filled with wild turns, as new wings reacted slightly differently to students’ old habits.

  I didn’t want to admit that Ezarit was right, at least about the new wings. I’d fly more confidently on the old ones, because I hadn’t practiced with the new. I hoped so, at least.

  I wished I’d never gone out on that balcony during the migration. Wished I could undo that morning the way Elna unraveled a ripped cloth to mend it again.

  “You won’t be the only one on well-worn wings, Kirit.” Nat used adult wings already. He hadn’t said anything, but I knew they were a pair that had belonged to his father, long ago.

  “How many times have you flown on those?”

  “A lot. Not far, not breaking any Laws. But I’ve been flying with them for moons.”

  I’d been too wrapped up in my own concerns about Ezarit’s trade run, the new quarters. I tried to picture what his wings looked like in the air and couldn’t.

  “Look on the bright side,” Nat added. “You won’t have to patch your new wings up after the test. Or worry about them getting ripped during Group flight. That’s lucky.” He flicked rotten blackberries off the balcony. “I heard Viit’s sons are flying tomorrow. That will be exciting.”

  “Did Dojha or Sidra say who else would Magister the tests?” Our own Magister Florian, of course. But teachers were not allowed to judge the merits of anyone from their own tower.

  Nat shrugged. “The usual, plus one new Magister for Mondarath. And Dix from Wirra. Since Magister Granth is still sick.”

  I tensed. Dix. Ezarit’s former rival. Or Father’s old friend. I was never sure, and Ezarit wouldn’t discuss it.

  “I should study some more. I need to get everything right if Magister Dix is testing.”

  “She can’t be as bad as your mother makes it sound.” Nat turned the bone chips over in his hands again, distracted.

  “I’m not willing to risk it. I have to do well. Dix can’t stand my mother, or me.” Before the migration, before she’d flown, Ezarit had lit a small banner for Magister Granth’s health, hoping that his coughing disease would pass and I wouldn’t be in Dix’s path. “She holds a grudge.”

  “You can’t think she’d pull anything in front of the Singers?”

  I s
wallowed. I didn’t know. Dix. Old wings. My rough singing voice. And Singer Wik.

  “It will be all right, Kirit.” Nat sat down beside me. “We’ll figure it out. And these too.” He fingered the chips. “Whatever they’re for.”

  “Why are you so interested in those, when you should be as worried as me?”

  “They were my dad’s.” Nat rattled the blue skein. “What if they’re connected to why he was thrown down? Or with something else about the city? Why Lith fell?”

  I listened as his excitement grew. Nat had asked questions and spouted theories since we were little. Why there were skymouths. How the Singers stayed fed when they didn’t grow anything. Why the city roared. What had happened to Naton.

  “I’ll take a closer look at them with you, after the wingtest. We can talk to Tobiat again too.”

  “If these are Singers’ things, the Spire will want them back. Maybe Tobiat stole them from Naton, and that’s why my dad was thrown down.” I tensed at the mention of Singers, but Nat didn’t notice. He turned the chips over once more, then put them back into a fold of his robe, musing. “Maybe we can trade the skein to the Singers for answers.” He tied the chips securely in his robe, then looked at me. His brow furrowed in concern. “You’re still worried. I’ll help you study, if you want.”

  We sang softly through the short night and the early predawn, first Laws, then calculations and strategies for flying in a group of strangers. The hardest part of going beyond your own towers without a Magister in the lead was gliding from tower to tower without getting tangled, or worse, with strangers who were moving from place to place. We dozed on the balcony, wings by our sides, and woke to find that the moon had fallen again.

  We had barely rested and were stiff from sitting on the bare floor.

  “Nat, we’re goners,” I said. “We’ll fail for sure.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t at least. Then I’ll put in a good word for you next year.”

  His bravado now and his temper the night before suddenly seemed much clearer to me. He was as afraid as I was. Tired of being the lowest on the tower. He wanted his future as much as I wanted mine. For the first time in a long time, I stepped outside myself and saw him, saw how much he’d changed.

  I leaned into his shoulder, and he leaned back. “We’ll both rise.”

  The sun had edged over the clouds and Elna had only just emerged from behind the sleeping screens when we came back in.

  “I hope you didn’t sleep on the balcony,” she grumbled.

  “Not at all,” Nat lied. “Just checking the wind for today.”

  5

  WINGTEST

  Four bone horns sounded short, bright notes across the morning: one each from Densira, Viit, Wirra, and Mondarath.

  First warning. If our feet weren’t on the testing plinth by the fifth warning, we would not wingtest until Allsuns.

  I fumbled with my straps, my fingers thick and clumsy. Elna finished securing Nat’s straps and hurried over, tutting. “Your mother wishes she were here to do this for you.”

  I wished it too.

  Elna’s hands were strong. She pulled the bindings too tight at first. She was used to Nat’s broader shoulders.

  We wrapped ourselves warm and tied our quilted silks close. Nat pulled his hair back from his eyes with a strand of silk. I didn’t have time to braid mine properly. It was a mess of tangles.

  “Here.” Elna pressed something soft and thick into my hands. A knitted cap, made of thick spun spidersilk and hemp. The cap’s chevron pattern was tight enough to bind my hair against the wind. She grinned.

  “You made this?”

  She smiled, proud. I hesitated. I’d need something to keep the cap on.

  I unfolded the cap from what it concealed. A glint of aged gray-yellow metal, a shimmer of well-polished glass. My mother’s lenses. She’d paid a courier to bring them, but could not come herself.

  No matter. Part of her would fly with me today. The lenses had survived for who knew how long, handed up, the straps replaced, dents carefully pounded from the frames. She considered them her good-luck charm.

  Hope twisted the corners of my frown. I put cap and lenses on. Tightened the straps myself, until the padded rims pressed against my eye sockets. The lenses guarded my tired eyes from everything I saw: they framed and contained the sky.

  A second warning sounded from the four towers.

  The Magisters and their council assistants would have secured the testing plinth between the towers and raised the second wingtest flag by now: a blue banner edged in gray. We had to hurry.

  Nat and I unfurled our wings and moved to the edge of the balcony. Elna whispered, “Go higher,” behind us.

  A strong gust swept round the tower. Densira’s Allmoons banners kicked red arabesques on balconies above us. They streamed up and towards the plinth. A rising gust. A good sign indeed. We leapt together and caught the wind.

  As we rose on the gust, two sets of brown wings emerged from Wirra and another three, gray, green, and brown, from Viit. We were halfway to the plinth when the air grew sloppy. An eddy spilling from the lee of Mondarath soiled the gust. I dipped, then Nat wobbled. We had to shift to another updraft, quickly. My mother’s lenses slipped down my nose as I turned my head left and right.

  Then I spotted a strong breeze marked by a line of coasting whipperlings. Whistling to Nat, I rolled for the new vent. He followed.

  By the time we climbed above the towers, on approach to the plinth, we were drenched in sweat.

  “We could have called for a ladder,” Nat yelled, his wing’s left pinion close to mine.

  I shook my head. No ladder. Not for me. No matter how tired I was. I cupped my wings to slow my approach to the testing plinth. Checked to make sure the path was clear. The tests might not have started, but the Magisters and councilors already watched, and judged.

  The bone horns sounded. Three warnings.

  My arms ached, and the back of my neck. I hoped we would have time to rest between challenges.

  My feet touched the woven plinth. The warp and weft of it gave slightly when I landed as close to Densira’s Magister, Florian, as possible. He dipped his head to me, his face carefully blank.

  Nat circled once more and, instead of sinking, executed a flip that cut his wind and dropped him square between the two Singers at the center of the plinth. They pretended not to notice. Nat grinned ear-to-ear.

  I adjusted my lenses so they wouldn’t slip again. Not during the tests.

  The Singers faced away from me. I couldn’t tell if the taller one was Wik, the Singer who had rescued and then threatened me. Their bodies were gray turrets in the colorful swirl of wings and nervousness. I would learn soon enough whether he’d come today.

  Around us, students rested and stretched. They recited tower names to themselves. More than a few looked worried.

  The four Magisters stood at the plinth’s four corners, symbolizing the four quadrants of the city. Florian for Densira. Viit’s able instructor, Magister Calli. A young Magister from Mondarath, so recently arrived no one knew his name. And Dix as Magister for Wirra. She grinned at me, showing as many teeth as she could manage.

  A net stretched below the plinth, strung between the four towers and tied by sinew. A brown-robed member of the traders’ guild landed beside the Singers at the center of the plinth. The Singers dipped their heads, but did not bow. Finally, a crafter landed, her embroidered wings glittering in the morning light. The city and its towers were now represented. The plinth creaked and swung in the wind. The bone horns sounded a fourth time.

  Two more students skidded to landings and found their towers, mumbling apologies. The Singers split from the central group. They carried four silk bags to the Magisters at the corners: one Singer walked south and west; the other, north and east. As the Singer carrying Densira’s and Mondarath’s bags approached, my breath caught again. Wik.

  His profile in the sunlight threw me off guard; I was mesmerized by the silv
er tattoos. They made him look sharper, more imposing. They accented his cheekbones and his chin.

  He smiled at Florian and the group. “I wish you all luck in your knowledge and in the sky.” He did not look at me, but the corner of his lip twitched.

  My throat tightened. What could the Singer do to me, here under open sky?

  He could do anything he thought would help the city, I realized. Anything at all. My exhaustion heightened my panic. At a loss, I hummed Elna’s song from two nights ago to myself. It worked surprisingly well. I calmed enough to thank the Singer with a clear voice. He paused to look at me, sending a shiver down my spine. Then he continued his slow circuit of the plinth.

  “Don’t worry about the test, or Dix,” Nat whispered. “The guild is watching. The Singers are watching. The Magisters look out for their towers. You’ll be fine.”

  I bristled because Nat didn’t understand, before I remembered that he couldn’t understand. I hadn’t told him anything.

  Florian pulled a bone marker from the bag, but did not look at it.

  The observing guilds and Magisters ensured the Singer could not fail me overtly. But the Spire had ways of meddling with outcomes. Ezarit had always been especially careful in her dealings with them. I fretted the possibilities, then realized that was exactly what they wanted me to do.

  The temporary plinth and the net beneath swayed in the wind. Bone cleats that had been carved into the tower tops of Mondarath and Viit anchored the thick ropes that held the plinth firmly in the sky. Secondary ties looped through moorings cut in Densira’s balconies and Wirra’s. The lines were temporary, made of fiber and the strongest silks, not spliced with sinew. They would hold for our needs and be used again for the wingfights. The plinth was not permanent, not like a bridge. Only Singers could provide the skymouth sinew necessary for a bridge. With it, they bound the city together.

  The towers below us twisted slightly at each tier, each level a little wider than the one above it, lower levels darkening with age and garbage.

  I looked around, praying the skies would keep clear. Several other students did the same. I saw my cousin, the talkative Dikarit, who’d failed Laws and Solo last year. He gestured to me to stand with him, but I waved back, choosing to stay by Nat.