The lenses. I bet Ezarit regretted wasting them now. She didn’t want me by her side. Doran Grigrit didn’t want me. Nor Densira. None would have the Lawsbreaker, the skymouth attractor. None would have Nat Brokenwings either. We were nearly castoffs. Unlucky. If we failed again, we could wind up skulking in the low tiers, scraping filth from trash to get by. Unless we flew our own way.
Singer Wik was behind this. The Singers had taken everything, even after I’d paid my debt to my tower. The Spire on the horizon caught my eye. In the fading light, the tower was pure and white, surrounded by the city’s waving banners.
I would run straight into its walls, like a bird. The tower would shake as I fell.
They would not come for me. I would go to the Spire to find the truth, I’d take them by surprise. They would give me my wings and my marker, or I would challenge like Ezarit had. At first light, I would demand my rights and have my questions answered. Nat too.
Nat flew behind me and back a bit. In my reflecting lens, I saw his clenched jaw, his narrowed eyes. He wanted answers too.
While the city marked its shortest day, grieved its losses, and moved on, we would mark the city. Carve a hole in it. Break tradition.
We would take what it refused to give.
I shifted my gaze, refocusing at the approaching view. As the towers began to light Allmoons banners, the central rooftops blossomed with fire along their edges. Dusk advanced; the city came alight, with the Spire pale and steady at its center.
We aimed our wings, flying direct and angry towards the city’s heart.
9. APPROACH
The current we rode carried us high. We looked down over the central towers as the flickering banners faded to ash.
We’d broken so many Laws tonight. I wondered at that. And then I did not even care. I wasn’t Ezarit’s obedient girl anymore. Where had that gotten me?
A scrim of high clouds and the gaining dark gave us some cover. We were shadows tonight, hidden by ritual. The city’s eyes were on its lost. We would be obscured until the moon had fully risen and the banners burned away.
We dove into Varu’s shadow, then around. No one peered from its balconies. All were on the tower’s highest levels, remembering.
To fly unseen was frightening. I was used to life lived in the open, where everyone watched. In the crush of neighbors at the Allmoons lightings, I’d never thought of what the rest of the city was like, dark below the canopy of banners lit and burning.
The Singers, too, were gone from the top of the Spire. Attending their duties around the city, chronicling the lost. I understood the need for the Bethalial now. No one but Singer-born or Singer-sworn may approach the Spire at Allmoons. Well. I was under a Singer fiat, wasn’t I? That was good enough for me.
The Spire looked as impenetrable as ever, but no gray wings were about to see us on our mad approach.
We both knew the Spire wasn’t empty. Not all Singers attended Allmoons on the towers. Some Singers, according to tower gossip, never left the Spire’s walls. They sequestered themselves in order to more closely listen to the city and discern its needs. They turned inwards for the good of the city. That was their sacrifice.
That was also our opening, Nat’s and mine. We glided close enough to the Spire that, if it had balconies, they would have seen us. The market nets were pulled up to the top of the Spire, their baskets bound as if for a storm.
“We are the Nightwings!” Nat crowed. Figures from a children’s song. “None see us!”
For the first time, I wondered if Singers stayed at the towers after Allmoons. No one flew at night, so they must. No one except Nat and me. We raced the dark now, two shadows in the gloaming light.
Nat took the lead again. “I know where we need to go. Tobiat said the chips were made for something about sixteen tiers down.”
We chased the dreams of an addled hermit and a dead man. As my anger ebbed, I grew afraid that we would soon join their ranks. Who was better off, Tobiat or Naton? Enough. I shook off those dark thoughts.
Ten tiers. My eardrums grew tight, then released. The clouds swirled too close, too dangerous. We were far enough down that, in any other tower, we’d be staring at filth-clotted walls. The Spire was different. The pristine exterior was decorated with carvings here and there, not filth. They didn’t throw their waste down the outside of the tower as the rest of us did. Either that, or they didn’t make any waste. Another Singer mystery.
I followed Nat, then flew by his side as we circled the sixteenth tier. No nets here, only grips and cleats where nets once were. He pointed to something rough-looking on our first circuit of the Spire. Not the sixteenth tier down. The fifteenth. A portion of the wall carved with several markings, made familiar by Naton’s bone chips.
“I told you!” he yelled.
And then we were past it. I’d barely had time to process what I saw. But we circled again. As we came back in range, Nat pulled his bow and nocked an arrow.
He’d tied a thin line of spidersilk and tendon tight above the arrow’s fletching. It dipped a thin shadow through the air, to his wingstraps. Nat had bound himself to the shaft.
I had no time to question the wisdom of this plan before he aimed and shot. Beautifully. Like a true hunter. The arrow threaded the eye of a bone cleat carved into the wall. Nat pulled on the rope, and the arrow flipped up. Locked tight to the eye. Then the rope pulled taut between Nat and the tower, and he was ripped from our forward flight. I looked under my wing and behind me to see him dangling from the fifteenth tier down on the Spire. That must have hurt.
When I’d left the wingfight and Mondarath, my ears had been full of roaring anger. I realized now how little thought I’d put to this, besides following Nat. That perhaps he’d planned for one, not two, to approach the Spire. Nat knew exactly how he would connect himself to the tower and had planned carefully. No such preparations were in place for me.
I needed to make the next circuit of the Spire on my own. I flew silent, eyes casting left, right, and down for a Singer, for a hint of skymouths or anything else. The cold winds whistled around me. Below, clouds and the towers began to glitter in the rising light of Allmoons. In a few moments, the glass beads I’d woven in my braids and along the edges of my wings would pick up the light and throw it like a beacon to anyone who happened to glance into the dark night sky.
This should have been a day of celebration and joy. Instead, rage cooled into sadness. I was alone in all the city, but for a single friend. Oldest friend. Wing-brother.
I completed the circuit and saw Nat clinging to the wall. He’d driven two pitons into the bone during my turn. He worked fast, for sure.
As I passed, he tossed me a line, and I missed it. Cursing, I found myself with a choice. I could circle a third time or turn and beat across the wind to the thrown rope.
The moon would be fully up before I flew around the Spire a third time. Too dangerous. I would turn. I would do this the hard way.
I dipped my left wing and banked a turn out of the breeze. The silk of my wings flapped noisily between the battens, then stilled. As I turned, I lost altitude. Now Nat was above me, and I neared the seventeenth tier downtower. There had been little enough rope before, and when he threw it again, I had to be higher. I strained to find a strong gust.
In the Spire’s wind shadow, there wasn’t enough unsullied air to lift me higher.
I pulled closer to the Spire, hoping for an updraft. That’s when I saw them. Another set of carvings similar to the ones Nat had found, but deeper. And a mark for a handgrip.