We’d been taught to fly to handgrips in emergencies or storms and had practiced clinging to Densira’s spurs, but I’d never done it without a net. Nor in the dark. I locked my wing harness with a thumb and withdrew my fingers from both sets of fine controls. My breathing came quicker, and my mouth felt dry as old bone. I crooked my arms in the winghooks and prepared to grab.
I was flying too fast when the grip came within reach. I crashed into the Spire and scrambled my hands along its sides, splintering shards from the wall into my palms as I clawed.
The wind lifted my wings and gave me a moment’s buoyancy. Then the gust strengthened and tried to tear me from the wall, just as my fingers sank through a hole with a deep grip in it. I grasped hard and hoped. Detached my other hand and grabbed double-handed, pulling my body parallel with the wall of the Spire. Clouds, it hurt. I splayed against the wall, powerless to do more.
Nat stifled a shout.
With my face pressed so close to the carvings, I could see holes within the symbols. Much like the chips had, but finger-sized. Slowly I peeled a few fingers from the grip and reached them to the holes.
Nat and Tobiat were right. The chips were a map. To what? To secret Spire gates? That would be worth plenty to the Singers. And to us, stranded on the side of the tower in the middle of the night.
“Can you climb up?” Nat called.
I shook my head. “Wait a minute, and I’ll either climb or peel off and try again.” I tried to slow my breathing as I peered into the darkness for clues about the quality of the wind this close to the Spire.
My foot began to slip, and I scrambled again for purchase. Mashed myself as close to the wall as I could, fingers still caught in the smaller holes. Something gave behind the pressure of my fingertips. I pressed again.
A grinding sound came from inside the wall. When I looked down, I could see a shadow growing on the pale tower; a distant panel of bone below me began to slide sideways.
As the gate opened, I heard other sounds, like water running down a wall.
Of course they had gates. Secret exits, for when flying from the top of the Spire wouldn’t do or they came under attack from a rogue tower.
“Nat!” He’d love this. Perhaps this was enough of a secret for him, for both of us. Then we could fly home. But to what kind of welcome?
There must be more such gates. If Naton’s chips marked them all, the Singers would be eager to have the skein back. Perhaps they would trade for it after all.
The grinding sound continued. I couldn’t see much, but I could feel movement in my fingers, and in the bone pressed against my chest. A rush of foul air brushed my cheek. My fingers tightened on the grip in the walls and in the holes.
Nat shouted again. He gestured wildly. His feet scrambled, his legs pumped and a wing jammed against the tower. He tried to climb back up the rope, panicking.
I hung on tight and looked around in time to catch the ripple and the tear in the sky that became a slick maw, blood-black, with teeth that glittered like stars, aimed right at me.
The monster pushed a pulse of raw wind before it. My wings filled with it and pinned me hard to the wall.
I could not breathe. I could not turn and scream — Nat was screaming enough for both of us.
From the corner of my eye, I saw motion in the darkness. Shadows swooped past. A net flew through the air and landed with a slick sound in front of me. The breath of the skymouth stopped pushing at me. I could breathe again.
Gray-winged Singers flew above and below me. One made a high-pitched noise and pulled the skymouth away by the net.
Another threw a second net at me. The ropes, made of sticky spidersilk, smelled of herbs and muzz. The silk tightened around me, cracking wing battens, pressing its cloying scent at my nose and mouth. I could not see Nat.
“Where are you?” I yelled to him as I was pulled from the wall.
The net’s embrace wrapped me tight. I was lifted higher, bound in sick-sweet ropes. The stars spun. The moon shrank to a pinhole. Alone, I rose up to it and disappeared.
PART TWO. THE SPIRE
10. FORGOTTEN
Rough bone pressed against my palms, my face, my knees.
I was not falling. Not eaten. But I could not hear the wind.
My eyes were crusted shut. I rubbed the grit from them until they opened enough to reveal blurred shadows. I drew a breath full of filth and dried bone. When I coughed, a pale dust cloud rose cumulus beside my head, then settled, glittering, across my hand.
Tied around my wrist, a gray silk cord held three thick markers. They rattled together when I moved. Laws. New ones. Heavy ones.
I pushed hard against the floor with both hands, then raised my head and torso until the room spun and my heart beat a tattoo in my ears. When I could breathe again, when the pounding ebbed to a dull pulse, I eased onto my knees.
“Nat?”
My words echoed. No reply in the darkness.
My arms wouldn’t extend or lift from my sides. I touched left hand to right shoulder to find thick strands of spidersilk. The Singer’s net. I grasped it and lifted, intending to peel the sticky silk from my shoulders and back.
My hiss of pain echoed through the room as my skin stuck to the silk. Still, I did not pause. Skin, shards of battens, and wing fell away with the net, broken.
As the pile of discarded net and wing shifted with my movements, the floor rumbled and sighed. I had not caused that sound, but I knew what it was. Below me, the city spoke softly and then grew silent.
Once free of the net, I reached out and touched bone walls in every direction. My markers rattled. I tucked them under the cord to still them.
Now I could hear someone singing, faint notes rising and falling beyond the wall. But as my hands made a circuit of my prison, I discovered no doors, no openings. No way to reach the voice. No breeze here either. Only a rough wall that rose higher than I could stretch my fingers.
Then the darkness shifted. Broke. Far above my head, a small light guttered and held. Someone had set an oil lamp into the wall. The light struck the space in patches and, as my eyes steadied enough to trace it, the shadows of my prison acquired edge and gouge: carvings, everywhere.
On the walls, Singers fought gryphons in the carved clouds; they tore carved wings from a woman, they threw a flailing man from a carved tower.
I had no doubts now. I was trapped within the walls of the Spire.
The bone murals of the prison continued along the floor. I lifted my aching knee and studied a red imprint in my skin: a face carved mid-scream.
Above me in the growing glare of the lantern, a white arc appeared like a moon unfurling: crescent, then half, then full. A carved bone pail scraped against the wall as it was lowered on a rope. The pail dropped into my upstretched hands, and I felt the edges of words. More Laws. Bethalial, Trespass, Treason.
Nothing in this room was uncarved, unmarked, except me.
The pail slipped from my hands and clattered against the floor. It wobbled to a stop, and I crawled to it. Inside were a bladder sack and a dried bird’s gizzard. I unstoppered the sack and sipped. Water. It tasted like scourweed. I put the bird’s gizzard in my pocket.
I muttered my thanks. My voice was a rasp.
“You are welcome, Kirit Notower,” a voice said in response, startling me. Before I could respond, the bucket rose on its rope. The moonlight above my head shrank to a hairline crescent and then vanished.
I put my head on my knees, wrapped my arms around my shins, and wept until I ran dry.
Later, I took the gizzard from my pocket and looked at it. They were feeding me. If the Singers had wanted me dead, I would be.