Ezarit’s voice whispered in my mind. You gave them what they wanted. What do you hold in trade now? I shook my head to clear the sound. Rumul wouldn’t. They needed me. Wik had said so. I held myself in trade still.
And if I was not good enough to be a Singer? What then?
If I was still at risk, so was Ezarit.
The Singers approached, carrying fistfuls of bone chips towards the scales. They surrounded the brass baskets, one Singer for each of the towers. The ledge filled precariously with people.
“What are they doing?” I turned to Ciel, but she’d disappeared. I watched alone as more Singers appeared from every direction, their flying nets filled with men and women. All were dressed in white, most clinging to the nets disinterestedly.
Drugged, of course.
“Where have you been?” Sellis whispered to me as she hurried past, Wik close on her heels. “We searched for you. Come with us!” She grabbed my robe and pulled me from my hiding place. “Rumul’s orders.”
She didn’t let go of my robes when I began to scramble after her. I picked up my pace, lest she drag me right over the edge.
The Spire’s silence grew heavier as more Singers landed, none making a sound. We reached the gathering around the scales in time to watch them place the first of the chips in the empty bin.
“Wirra,” said the Singer as he placed a chip. Bone hit metal. A high sound, a sour sound. The only sound.
The scale barely moved. Another Singer came forward, and another, adding chips from each tower to the basket until it began to drop against the weight of the bone chunk on the other side. More Singers stood by, their hands cradling the chips of the Lawsbreakers. Waiting to see whether those crimes against the city would be added to the weight.
The Singers worked silently, and the citizens who stood with them kept silent too. The man shouting for his wife had been bound and struggled beside her now.
Standing close to the Singers, I heard soft clicks and whispers. Now and then one crouched, putting an ear to the ledge. Something they heard caused them to hurry, gesture more Singers to action. Almost all the nets had been stripped of their Lawsmarkers now.
Sellis pulled me forward.
By now, more than a hundred Singers had gathered atop the Spire. More soared around it. The councilors and the craft and trade representatives, plus the citizens in the nets made over two hundred souls standing on the Spire. The wind whipped robes. The captives shivered in the cold air.
“Densira.”
I saw a ragged robe and recognized the face of the woman who had charged at Nat and me in the lowtower.
But no Ezarit. I despised my own relief.
Rumul sang the verses allowed during Silence. This part of Conclave I understood.
You have each broken Laws.
Your crimes weigh on the city.
You have heard it roar.
You and your towers
have brought the city to anger.
As he sang, he turned to me. His eyes bored a hole through me, and I froze. How close I’d come to sharing the fate of the cloudbound. For that was what they were. What I could have been.
Rumul’s companion sang then. The Singer with the silver streak in her hair. Her voice was a contralto, a contrast to Rumul’s deep tones. “With your sacrifice, the city will be once more at peace.”
My breath caught as I counted the number of Lawsmarks balancing the scales. The men and women bound atop the Spire. With the size of the roar, the scales didn’t sit even until almost all of their chips had been added: thirty out of thirty-five. I’d known the process of Conclave from Magister Florian, if not the reality. Not since the city rose through the clouds had so many been thrown down at once.
A Singer with a hand on the Spire’s roof whistled. His face contorted with worry. The woman sped up her song, rushing the words. Everyone atop the tower leaned forward, urging her to greater speed. Finally, she finished. “We do what is best for the city, though it causes us pain,” she sang. And she walked to where the first cloudbound was held, unfurling her wings as she reached the edge. She freed a thin man from the net, clasped him by the shoulders, and fell with him into the sky. A moment passed, and we saw them gliding out towards the edge of the city.
The man’s feet kicked in the air, but he made no sound. Nothing from him, no shriek, or cry. He was carried away in silence.
Rumul nodded. “He goes well.” The head Singer looked to the other cloudbound. More Lawsbreakers had been prodded to their feet and stripped of their nets. Many shivered, their eyes on the horizon. Others stared at us. I forced myself to look back, though I wanted to scream.
Nat, oh, Nat. Your father. This happened to him.
Sellis searched my face, saw my miserable expression, but did not scold me or yank at my arm.
Thirty. So many. Even one was too many. Too much of a weight to bear. I took a step forward. Sellis gripped my wrist and held me in place. Did not let go.
Rumul looked to the gathered Singers and held out his hands. One at a time, Singers in dark gray robes stepped behind one of the cloudbound, set their wings, and flew to the city’s edges, where they would let go of their burdens. One at a time, the cloudbound were taken away, all silent save the second to last, a young man who pleaded for his life. “My father,” he said, “has money and goods. All you could need. It has saved us before, why not now?”
“Not enough muzz,” someone whispered behind me.
“Or he’s bargained for his life before,” I whispered back, before I locked my mouth against the Silence.
Sellis glared at me and twisted my littlest finger until I wanted to shriek against the pain. “Silence.”
This cloudbound man looked familiar too. He’d been at the wingfight, among the traders. He kept begging, even as the Singers frowned and drew closer. They bound his mouth with silk, so he wouldn’t disturb the city further in his fall. They lifted him away, to the south.
Some towers gave more than others. Mondarath for debauchery. Wirra for fighting. Many more from the southlands for debts and trespasses. But no one I knew among them. Not Ezarit, not Elna. I wiped my leaking eyes with a corner of my sleeve. Small mercies.
Singers returned and took their posts around the rim of the Spire, ready to go out again to the towers if the city was not appeased. They stood still as carvings, resolute. Wrapped in their duty, though their eyes glistened with tears and wind.
With a shock, I realized that they hated what they did. And yet they did it. Wik stood among them, eyes red.
They waited.
We waited with them.
We stood until night fell, until the gray shapes outlined against the lingering dusk blocked out the stars in the sky.
The crafters and councilors waited. I saw Councilman Vant standing near a ladder, but he did not see me. He scratched his nose and blinked in the cold wind.
Sellis’s stomach growled.
This was another part of Conclave I had not known. We marked the emptiness left by the cloudbound with the pain in our stomachs.
Around the Spire, the towers kept silent too.
By dawn, the Singers who had pressed hands and ears to the Spire throughout the night stood. The city’s rumbles had ceased.
By noon, we were weak from standing in the wind and our stomach pangs had turned to birds’ claws, scraping against our ribs. Moc and Ciel were ashen shadows of themselves. They leaned against the woman who’d sung the Conclave.
Someone passed around a water sack. We each took a single sip. The water tasted sour.
By evening, the city had not roared again. A Singer ascended from below. “The Enclosed are satisfied. The city is appeased.”