He raised a finger. “No citizens fly at Allmoons.” He said it as if he held a greater secret behind his lips. I wanted to draw it out, and I didn’t want to know.
“The Singers fly at night?” I pictured myself and Nat at Allmoons. We’d felt we alone owned the sky. We hadn’t known. Nat would have loved knowing. And then I realized.
“This is what Naton found out.”
Rumul paused and smiled. Then he took a breath and continued. “Some Singers fly at night. An important skill, especially for those who can control the skymouths.”
“How is that possible? Nat and I—” I cut myself off, to avoid thinking about Nat. “How do you see the wind? The towers? How do you not collide and fall?” I stopped and thought. “The skymouths?”
He held up a finger. Patience. “It is a skill you have yet to learn.”
I was distracted. Now that I knew Naton’s treason against the city, that he’d found out the Singers fly at night, I wanted to know more about how they flew. But for Nat’s memory, I chased the last shreds of the secret down. The bone chips Tobiat had given to us had notes etched on the backs, in what I now knew to be Singer notations. Maybe they held the secret to night flying. And we’d had them in our hands the whole time.
“Who was Naton going to tell?”
Rumul shrugged. “We learned he had betrayed us shortly before the last Conclave. He hadn’t yet shared what he knew with his contact, but it was a trader.”
“But he never told?”
“He was caught before he could pass the information on. We caught his colluder afterwards, but the notes he’d made were lost in the confusion of Conclave.”
“How did you learn about the betrayal?”
Rumul grew still again. Then sighed. “My first acolyte, on his excursion. He discovered the treason.” He paced the length of his room, to the hammock, and returned to his workbench. Sat down with a reluctant frown.
Treason.
“The acolyte had taken up with a young, ambitious trader. Naton had told her already that he had information he wanted to sell. She was gathering the markers to pay him. Our Singer kept her from making the mistake of meeting him and turned Naton in.” He looked at me significantly.
I drew the truth together in my head, saw it as a whole. The trader, young and ambitious — and who wouldn’t be faster at trading if they could fly at night when no one else could?
Ezarit. Naton had intended to give what he knew to Ezarit.
Oh, Ezarit.… Kept from breaking Laws by her … lover. Rumul’s acolyte. My father. My father had betrayed Naton, and kept Ezarit safe, and helped the Singers keep their secrets. No.
Rumul read my conclusions in my expression. “You see it now.”
I did — and if my stomach hadn’t been emptier than the sky before a migration, I might have been sick with it. But the memory of the secret Naton died for tugged at me.
They flew at night. Singers flew at night. And Ezarit had wanted to know how.
Two questions fought in my mind. They raced from my mouth.
“What happened to my father? And how do you do it? Flying in the dark, when you cannot see?”
Rumul smiled. His voice smoothed even more. “You will learn, if you choose. Sellis is training.”
He was silent, waiting on my answer. I knew danger still lingered. Rumul’s hold on the Spire was stronger than any councilman’s. And I suspected Sellis would not be overjoyed to have me along on her training. But this — what a thing to know. And what power to have.
“I wish to learn this,” I finally said. “I am ready to learn it.”
“You think so? You can understand why it is necessary to keep the Singers’ secrets? You understand why our duties, and the ones you saw at Conclave, are necessary?”
My thoughts returned to the Conclave’s horrors. I recoiled against the expected answer. There must be other ways. Things untried. Then I remembered Lith’s dark, cracked form. I considered how to make myself more secure, so that I did not become an offering myself.
I would silence my questions about Conclave. This was what Rumul asked of me. To keep Singer secrets, to help the city.
“Yes.” I was determined.
“No going back, Kirit. Accepting this skill means accepting all of what the Singers do. Going deeper into our secrets. Including what you saw during Conclave. When the time comes, you will fight all comers to protect the secrets of the Spire.”
“I will never throw down Elna or Ezarit.”
He agreed. “As long as you hew to Singer law, we will not need to hurt Ezarit.” He paused. “Or Elna.”
There it was. My trade. Not what I had planned at all when Nat and I flew through the night. I’d come then to take what was already mine. Now I agreed not just to serve the Spire, but to become it.
He brought out a bone pot of caustic ink and marked my left hand himself, right there. A small spiral, a coil. Like wind in the Gyre. His fingers gripped my hand. The touch of his brush burned, and I bit my lip hard.
No further ceremony signaled my passage. With one mark, I became even more Singer-bound.
“When you are ready, you will challenge in the Gyre,” said Rumul. Just then, Sellis entered the alcove. She stopped and stared at us both, as if she’d caught us in an unwelcome secret.
Rumul smiled at her. “Kirit will learn how to fight in the Gyre. To fly at night. To better guide skymouths. Then you will both be ready to challenge.”
Sellis’s entire expression changed. “We will be ready.”
I swallowed. They spoke in circles.
Rumul turned back to me. “Wik says you are doing well, but you must do this last thing quickly. Before Allsuns. The need is great. It will not be easy. And you must learn to fly as we do.”
His eyes met mine, and I sensed he was daring me to succeed in my father’s place. Or to fail on my own. For him, I was an experiment. No risk to him, only to myself. The higher I went, the further I could fall.
14. SENSE
Sellis watched me closely, silent questions hovering behind her eyes. She complimented my quick rise to third-stripe and compared her hand mark with mine. They were identical.
“Each council member has their own style,” she said, touching hers.
“What is that ink they use? It burns.”
She did not take her eyes off her mark. “A Singer secret. They mix it with something from the skymouths. That’s what stings and what makes the marks turn silver.”
I winced at the thought of gaining tattoos around my eyes like Wik had.
I didn’t see him that day. I did not know when he learned of my rise. Instead, I climbed down to the novices’ tier and watched the class. They practiced towers, much as I’d learned them at Densira for the wingtest.
When the Magister dismissed them, the novices broke left and right around me. Only Moc and Ciel greeted me.
“Why do they do that?” Around Sellis, the novices gathered and chittered happily, telling her about everything that happened in the Spire. She had the benefit of many eyes. I had two extra pairs only, both trained on me.
“You’re unpredictable,” Moc said. “You do unusual things. You couldn’t keep the Silence.”
“You’re tall.”
“Your voice is still strange.”
I raised a hand. “Enough, thanks.” I saw things more clearly. Even after showing them how quickly I could learn to be like them, the young Singers-to-be were still uncomfortable. I was different. The Spire didn’t like different. “You and Ciel aren’t bothered?”
Ciel tilted her head and laughed. “You’re new. Everything in the Spire is old and always happens up down up down. You came in sideways.”
They liked me for precisely the reasons the others didn’t. The twins were tiny and strange, but they were the eyes and ears I had in the Spire. I needed them.