I thought of my success with Laws and City at the wingtest and sputtered. I knew everything the city had required of me. Wik must have lied to the Spire as well, in order to ruin my test. I would show them. I jutted my chin higher and waited, standing, while the rest of the class found seats on bone benches and on the floor.
The Magister frowned. “Very well. Sing for us. Show us what you know.”
Fine. I would. I thought of what to sing. A song to show I knew Laws? A history?
The only thing that came to mind was The Rise. A children’s song. I could not sing that here. I beat the idea back and clutched at Laws. At anything. No words came.
Eventually, as children stared and whispered, I gave up and began The Rise.
“The clouds paled as we wound up and up,” I sang, ignoring the gasps. Good, let them know me and my terrible voice.
“The city rises on wings of Singer
and Trader and Crafter,
Rises to sun and wind, all together,
Never looking down.”
As I began the second verse, the Magister waved at me. “Stop. You are worse than I thought. And with our most treasured song.”
The class of children had collapsed around me in fits of silent laughter. My face flushed red. What had I done wrong? My voice. They were laughing at my voice. I was fierce when I began; now I was only ashamed.
“Moc.” The Magister crooked her finger. From behind a taller boy, Moc peered out with an apologetic look at me. “Lead your flightmates, please.”
Moc’s voice was a tremulous quaver, but his friends joined in, and the sound of young voices filled the room. Theirs was a boisterous retelling of The Rise — but not a version I’d ever heard before. This Rise told of danger, of dying, and of tower fighting tower. This Rise was not beautiful. It put music and memory to fear bred of long privations. It was a warning, wrapped in familiar notes.
In the Spire, even the songs were different.
Nat would have loved to know about this. As for me, I realized Sellis was right: I was worse than a fledge. If I was to get my wings back, I would need to learn fast.
By the time we broke for the evening meal, I had committed several verses to memory. My stomach growled as we walked to the common dining hall. Moc and Ciel took long strides on each side of me.
“We’ll help you remember,” Ciel said. “We’ll practice with you.”
“Don’t you sleep?”
Moc shook his head and grinned. “We learn a lot when everyone’s sleeping.”
And they did help me — on that day, and on many days after.
In the dining alcove, the twins seemed to know everyone. They filled their bowls with the day’s meal — peas, or potatoes, or spiced bird — and began chattering with other novices before they’d set their meals down on the long bone tables. I was swept up in their conversations and barely needed to speak myself. Often, I found that we sat near Sellis, who was surly but not outwardly rude.
The children of the Spire swirled around us, eating, talking with both hands and mouths full. They were much like children of any tower. And yet they knew things the rest of the city did not. I wished for the first time that I could have grown up here, that I’d been taught what had really happened, instead of a merely a pretty song filled with lies about the city I loved. There was power in the knowing.
* * *
The moon waned and filled, then waned again. I mended Sellis’s robes, badly at first, then better. Cleaned buckets and her cell.
My throat went raw from singing with the children.
Many evenings, Wik came to test my shouts and to instruct me further.
“There aren’t many of us,” he said.
I caught his meaning. “You are a skymouth shouter, too.”
“Yes, but not naturally. I had to train, and I’m still never certain—” He swallowed before continuing. “Whether it is enough to stop the next one. It has been, so far. I am lucky.”
He taught me to aim my voice, by standing across the Gyre until I could shout at him in any wind. He made me do breathing exercises to strengthen my diaphragm and lengthen my shouts. “So you don’t black out again,” he said.
He frustrated me with his criticisms. “You are not trying hard enough. Your voice doesn’t have the right timbre, as it did at Densira. You must try harder.”
The harder I tried, the more I was unable to recall what shouting at the skymouth had sounded like, or felt like, and the more I was convinced that I was unable to manage it on demand. What good was I to the Singers if I could not control my voice?
“It’s no good, Wik.” My voice rasped from the exercises.
“We will find another way,” he said. “I must ask the council for permission.” He refused to elaborate.
Meantime, we walked the Spire and practiced. Wik and Sellis and I. For Sellis lurked these lessons, and sometimes tried to accomplish the same types of shouts that Wik and I were practicing. Her frustration built when Wik shook his head at her attempts, but she kept trying.
“Most Singers can’t, Sellis,” he said. “It’s all right to not be perfect at something.”
“There are many things I haven’t perfected — yet,” she said, frowning.
The lower tiers we walked through were as richly carved with city and Singer history as the oubliette had been carved with fears and monsters. As we walked, I noticed that at least one place — sometimes less than two hands wide — on each Spire tier had been left bare. We passed Singers paused by those walls, hands laid gently against those uncarved stretches of bone. Their eyes closed as if listening. I wished to understand what they heard, but when I reached out to a wall, Sellis swatted at my hand. “You may not. Not yet.”
On the other side of the passage, beyond the steep drop, Singers and older novices flew the Gyre’s swirling winds.
I wanted to regain my wings so that I might fly with them.
Sellis saw me watching. “Not yet.” She found me more carvings to study. “Soon,” Sellis encouraged me as she rousted me from the floor to clean her bucket and her bowl. “Soon,” the Magister said as I scrubbed the carvings on the upper tiers clean of grime. “Soon,” Wik promised, before asking me to shout for three minutes; my voice turned to gravel.
But I flew the Gyre in my dreams, before the galleries, up to the council balcony, and out through the apex into the blue sky.
And I learned to listen to the Spire in other ways, and through the Spire, the city.
I heard the city’s voice in the bone floors, through my feet as I walked, my knees as I scrubbed. I heard its rumbles and creaks, its sighs. I learned to speak to it in secret.
As I slowly learned, I was punished for nearly everything. For getting words wrong. For annoying Sellis. For being in the wrong place when a Singer wanted me somewhere else. I could not say how many infractions, but the punishment was always the same: not bone chips to weigh me down, but more cleaning and carving. My nose was filled with bone dust, and I grew tired beyond measure of being handed the carving tools. My hands thickened with calluses and scars from tracing patterns charcoaled on the walls for me by Sellis, the Magisters, Wik, and seemingly anyone else passing by.
And yet, I learned. Despite everything. Moc and Ciel knelt by me and sang with me while I gouged at the walls or scrubbed the floor. I watched Singers come and go on powerful wings and listened to the songs they sang to each other, citing challenges won long ago in order to support arguments today.
I pricked my ears for any mention of the windbeaters.
When the full moon showed through the top of the tower, the entire Spire stopped to sing The Rise. Sound swept me up in the history. The bravery. The real Rise. I mouthed the words I knew now, still hesitant to sing with them.