I told him everything, in a rush. That I wanted to live, any way I could. I told him why the Singers wanted me. What Wik forbade me to tell anyone. I told him what I could do. How I could help the city.
Nat did not respond. But the Spire did: it whispered secrets back to me, until I was ready to fly.
* * *
Covered in filth, my greasy braids matted against my head like a cap, I stripped all but the last layer of silk robes from my body and piled them below where I planned to climb.
I left my friend on the floor below me, with my broken wing. The Spire’s whispers pushed me higher.
I heard them as I balanced on the tips of my toes and slipped and fell. My back arched, and my head struck hard against the wall. I heard them when I woke again. Hopeful, fearful. Calling for me.
Nat would have wondered at me, I realized. Talking to the Spire. Starving to death, more like it. Get up, Nat would have whispered. Pull yourself up.
And so I did.
I found the carving tool and poked at a blister on my forefinger, let the sack of skin weep. It hurt. I howled with the pain as I did it again and again, until I was ready. Then I wrapped my fingers and toes in what was left of the cleaner spidersilk.
The wall was already warm and slick with grease from my hands. I ignored the pain in my fingers and concentrated on the lift I got from my legs. I pretended that my toes were part of the wall and that the Singer above had a rope around my waist and was hauling me up. I found I could inch my way up the wall, crack by crack. I pressed fingers and toes into the carved crevices: faces and wings and clouds and towers, the forgotten dreams of others who had been here before me. The spidersilk provided an extra stickiness that held my hands to the wall and let me stop and rest.
My legs and arms started to shake when I realized that the carvings were thinning. At the bottom, there was only a small uncarved space. Now that I was high — at least three tiers, I realized — there were many fewer handholds. The oubliette narrowed at the top, and if I could make it a few body lengths higher, I would be able to place a foot on the opposite wall. I could edge my way up. A big if. Not many more carvings here — a flock of birds, a faint trace of a flower, broken off.
Below me, the floor was dark. I knew now why the carvings below were so clear against the walls. They had been shaded with dried blood, where others had fallen, trying to rise.
Up high, the carvings were brighter: eggshell on bone.
I could see the edge of the crescent now. The buckets had stopped coming, but the window had been left open. A promise, if I could make it.
They waited for me there, the Singers who wanted me, though for what purpose and how long, I did not know. I did not care.
Anything to get out of this prison. I braced myself on a narrow foothold and dug into the wall with the carver. Dried bone curled away. Thin lines became deeper. I was not going for beauty or style. I would not leave a mark beyond a handhold. This was not my last message to my city, to the Spire. This was a way out, nothing more.
My fingers oozed blood when the carver finally splintered and shattered so badly I could not find a sturdy edge. I screamed with pain and frustration. My whole body was rigid.
Would what I’d done be enough? The Spire remained silent. I could not wait for it to speak again. I had to try on my own, a few more steps. I lifted a shaking arm and gripped the carving with my fingers, pulled. Lifted my foot and put it in the last bird on the wall. Placed my other foot on top of it. Grabbed for the new handhold I’d carved and pressed up. I nearly slipped. I scrambled for balance. The carver fell, and it took a long time before I heard it hit the floor.
With shaking legs, I moved my foot and stretched it to reach the other wall. My hipbone popped at the exertion. I had no idea how long I’d been climbing, but my body noted the time in aches.
I missed the voice of my city. The daily sounds from distant towers. The bustle and press of neighbors, the call of friends on the wing. I missed the voice of the Spire, the whispers.
I braced close to the ceiling and lifted my fingers from one handhold. Reached towards the crescent. I was short by fingerlengths.
I roared, pushed off my feet in frustration, and found myself lifting farther than I’d thought I could. My toes pointed hard, my pelvis rocked, my spine and shoulders and everything leaned towards that hole. My fingers seemed to grow, clawing for the crescent. Sinking my hands around the thick edge of bone that was the way out. I touched it with a fingertip on a wild swipe. That touch drove me forward again and up. I grabbed the edge with one hand, then the other. My feet slipped, and I hung for a moment, above the oil lamp, above the oubliette. My fingers slid. I had no strength left to hold on.
11. FOUND
A rush of air. A moment where I touched nothing, not the wall, not the ledge of the window. I flailed, hands cupping emptiness. Then one hand caught a muscled arm, reaching from the gap in the wall. Held tight.
“Easy. I’ve got you,” a familiar voice said. The brightness of the room threw his face into shadow, but I knew his profile. The way he clipped his words.
Wik leaned out of the opening above me. His fingers gripped my wrists tighter as he pulled me up. He turned his head away from me and spoke over his shoulder, almost grunting with the effort. “Tell Rumul she finally made it.”
I could not hear a response, but he turned his full attention back to me. My hands locked on to his arms, while his hands circled my biceps. I scrambled my feet against the bone wall and pushed as he pulled. From beyond him, a breeze brushed my cheek. Fresh air. I longed to bask in it.
He dragged me, still kicking, through the hole. The thick edge scraped the last spidersilk from my chest and bruised my ribs. I hit the floor hands first, then my knees connected with the hard surface.
Sunlight struck the bone floor, turning it and the walls bright white, shocking my shadow-trained eyes. All I could see in the dazzling room were gray foot wrappings and the edge of a dark robe.
“Rest,” Wik said. He held out a water sack, and I snatched it from his hands. This Singer. I swallowed my first sip, then took another. I spat that mouthful at his feet.
He laughed and stepped back. I was too weak to rise or to try again.
As my eyes grew used to the light, the lower half of the room took shape: a broad expanse with stools and a workbench, all carved from bone, near the wall where I sat. A threshold carved with chevrons and, beyond that, a passageway. Then more light and air. The passage bordered something like sky, though the light was strangely taut, like sunbeams strung on a bow.
I took another sip of the water. Built my strength to move, to rush for the passageway, to shout at Wik. To leave here.
With the sound of swishing robes, two more pairs of gray feet came into view. I struggled to sit straighter, my back and leg muscles protesting each shift in position.
“Kirit, you have broken such Laws.” The new voice belonged to another man. It was a smooth voice, the kind Ezarit had always told me to be careful about when trading. The kind of voice that lulled listeners before it struck them down.
This Singer listed my crimes. I could almost hear the songs that accompanied each broken Law: Bethalial. Trespass. Treason. War. I startled at the last. That had not been tied to my wrist.
“Did you think breaching the walls of the Spire was not War? You could be called a traitor to the city.” His voice was even, soft. Mellifluous. My skin crawled. Beneath the smooth tones, I heard darker notes.