I extended my hand through the air between us and placed it over the tablet. Wik smiled a thin, wary smile. Sellis gathered her robes and swept from the room. I could hear her shout an order that echoed through the Spire.
When Rumul tucked the chips back into his robe and pulled out a sharp bone knife, I knew there was no changing my mind. I took the knife and carved my name mark on the tablet, a thin scratch that barely showed.
Sellis returned with a pile of fabric, holding up gray robes banded with bright blue to replace the remains of my ragged clothing. They looked too small for me, but also whole and warm. A younger Singer brought a washing bowl. Sellis handed me a small cake made of grains, honey, and bird fat. It tasted like sunshine might.
The three of them waited as I swallowed my meal. Then I lifted the bone knife again. I pierced my thumb and squeezed the wound hard. A drop of my blood fell on the tablet. It darkened my mark and the Spire’s symbol, making both visible.
I was theirs, and they were mine. I was reborn into the Spire.
12. ACOLYTE
Sellis exited Rumul’s alcove again without a word, dragging me behind her. She sped through the tier so quickly I gained only a blurred impression of the more ornate wall carvings, their edges shadowed by the sunlight pouring through the tower’s apex. We came to a ladder cut into the thick outer wall and spines of the Spire.
“You’d best keep up on your own,” she said as she turned to descend. “I won’t be slowed down. I challenge for Singers’ wings this year.”
My aching feet strained to support me as I stumbled after her. The treads had barely enough space for a foot. My blisters and cuts made each step painful; my strained muscles too. I drew breath and tried to look strong. Capable.
“I already passed my wingtest,” I reassured her, while attempting to smile over my shoulder.
She paused on the ladder and looked up at me, flipping her dark braids off her shoulders, digging her close-set gaze right into mine. “That means nothing here. Nothing.”
I began to respond, but she’d descended again, and my fingers had started to slip. I clutched the slim carved rungs and scrambled after her.
We passed tier after tier, until I whimpered through my teeth each time my feet touched a new rung. On each tier, I heard the swish of robes as people passed, the murmur of conversations, and the sound of wind swirling nearby. On one floor, several voices were raised in song: tenors and altos. Their melody echoed off the wall where we climbed.
On another, lower tier, a group of children scrubbed the floor near the ladder. Two whispered in the shadows, their brushes dripping beside them. As Sellis passed, she hissed at them to get back to work. They stared for a moment longer, steel-blue eyes peering from identical faces, their robes gray with one blue stripe like mine. Then they scrambled back to the group just as an older Singer rounded a curve.
Sellis’s gray silk robes had three stripes of blue at the hem. The lowest stripe’s edge, undone and fraying, dragged on the risers. I tripped on it twice, then caught myself. Judging by its color and fit, my new clothing must have been intended for a much younger novice. How would I earn my stripes? How would I begin to keep up with Sellis?
She stopped so suddenly on the next tier that I nearly put my foot on her head. Sellis hissed and grabbed my ankle, threatening to topple me. “You will pay attention!”
“I assure you I am trying.”
“You are worse than a fledge!”
I could not argue that. Everything within the Spire struck me as strange, as if a tower like Densira had been turned inside out. My eyes ached for sky with each tier we passed; my ears missed the comforting sounds of families arguing, neighbors haggling, babies crying. For a group named Singers, their home was almost as quiet as the sky. They walked it as if they were listening for messages on the wind.
Sellis let go of me, but the suddenness of my change in situation kept me pinned to the wall. No longer trapped in Rumul’s prison, but still inside the Spire. I’d given up the sky and the towers in exchange for a life enclosed on all sides by the Spire’s bone walls.
Nat might have known what to do; I did not.
“Breathe,” Sellis said, no tinge of mercy to her voice. “I won’t carry you if you faint.”
I inhaled. I would find a way to live in this new place.
We left the ladders and paced half the circumference of the tier. Other girls who seemed to be the same age as Sellis, or older, greeted her as she passed. They stared at me. I felt the pit’s grime on my skin, the dried blood on my hands. The way my arms and legs showed beneath the too-small novice robe. I watched my feet, trying not to trip and further set myself apart.
To our left, the passageway beyond the alcoves and classrooms ran to a sudden drop. The Spire’s center was a void. Wind whistled as it rose past each tier, up and down the hollow of the Spire.
“To fall into the Gyre,” Sellis said, watching me with a level of calm that made my skin crawl, “is to fall forever. You should be careful.”
I craned my neck to look past her and saw galleries spaced around the Gyre, carved into the tower’s spines. Places to sit while watching a challenge, perhaps. Sellis dragged me on.
She turned suddenly, into a small alcove barely big enough for one person to sleep in. “Here are my quarters.” I hoped mine were close by. I could barely stand.
She glared at me again. “You will sleep here.” She pointed to the floor in front of her alcove. “They’ve made you my charge. I name you my acolyte. I do this for Rumul, and so you will do this for me. What I need, you get. What I drop, you pick up. Understand?” Her voice was brisk, businesslike. She didn’t care how I answered.
“Rising above your tier again, Sellis?” A boy peered around the corner. “You can’t take an acolyte until you are a Singer.”
“Special case,” Sellis said. “She is just now committed to the Spire.”
The boy whistled low and came closer, looking at me. “You came from outside?”
I saw no use in pretending otherwise. “I did.”
“Lurai,” Sellis said, “you aren’t even supposed to be on this tier. Go away.”
Lurai. Lurai. The name was so familiar. Beliak’s lost brother, yes.
As I remembered, he turned to leave.
“Did you come from Viit? I think I flew wingtest with your brother,” I said, hoping I could keep him here another few moments. The last thing I wanted was to be left alone with Sellis.
Lurai’s brow furrowed, and he smiled, bemused. “I don’t know any brothers. I am Spire, since I was young.” And he started to turn away again, but stopped. “What are the towers like? What is your name?”
“Her name is Kirit Spire, and she is not going to fill your head with boring tower talk, Lurai. She has work to do here.” Sellis gave him a gentle shove and then, from somewhere within her alcove, handed me a bucket filled with stink. “Get rid of that, acolyte. Bring the bucket back, cleaned. In the morning, I will have mending for you to do.”
I waited for her to tell me where to take the bucket. To point me towards the pouring points that every tower in the city had. But she turned her back to me, lay down on her sleeping pad with a sigh, and appeared to fall asleep with no further trouble.
Lurai had disappeared. I stood alone in the darkening tier with a bucket and orders, but no way to fulfill them. I heard rustling around me and knew that other occupants of the tier were peering out of their alcoves to see what I would do.
I considered taking the bucket and dumping it on Sellis, but this would have been a bad way to start my new life.