But they’d begun disappearing for days, even before the Conclave. When they returned, their temples bruised, their eyes bloodshot, I asked what had happened, and they tried to explain.
“Training,” they had said. “We train to hear better.”
The day after my meeting with Rumul, I found out what they meant.
* * *
Wik sent a whipperling to the twins and me. The message chips it carried listed a tier and an alcove. Two levels down.
When we arrived, breathing hard from rushing, I caught a glimmer of metal. Wik held an ancient tool in his hand. Its base was the same shape as the bruises that sometimes appeared at Ciel’s temples: a deep purple blotch overlaying her soft, honey-colored skin.
My fingertips brushed the cold lenses that hung from my neck. Wik frowned at me. “You have a disadvantage, Kirit. You do not know how to listen.”
This was unfair. I tried very hard to listen. I had already heard the city whisper and roar.
Noting my frown, he shook his head. “When they are very young, Singers begin training in a different kind of listening. Some use what they learn to better hear the city. Others, to keep track of signals when we fly and fight. Still others use what they hear to see better.”
The last pulled me out of my study of Ciel’s hair, her complex braids.
Seeing better with hearing?
“Close your eyes,” he said, coming to stand very close behind me. I twisted to look at him, and he raised his eyebrows and waited.
I closed my eyes.
Wik pressed one end of the metal tool against my temple.
In the darkness, I felt the pulse of his breath against my cheek. He didn’t speak.
A cool strip of silk was placed over my closed eyes and tightened. I tried to pull away, but Wik held me firm. “Don’t move.”
Then a sound of metal hitting metal. So much metal, I thought as the tool began to vibrate against my head.
“Listen,” whispered Wik.
I strained to do what he asked. I heard nothing beyond a muffled giggle on the other side of the room.
“Listen with your skin, your bones,” Wik said as he struck the metal rod again. This time, a hum echoed deep within my skull.
“Now we will change something,” he said. “See what the echoes do.”
I heard robes swish and Ciel tell Moc, “No, that way!” Then silence again. Then that sound vibration as Wik hit the rod pressing into my head. Echoes and vibration surrounded me. They had a slightly different shape, flatter, faster than before, but I couldn’t figure out why.
I described it to Wik. “Good!” He removed the tool from my head, the blindfold from my eyes.
In front of me, Ciel stood holding a broad piece of bone. She lowered it and rubbed her arms.
“You see?” she asked.
I didn’t, not really. “I see the panel you’re holding.”
“But what did you hear, before? Think.”
I heard vibrations. Waves of sound colliding behind my blindfolded eyes. They hurt. “The vibrations were different when you stood in front of me?”
Ciel grinned. Her eyes glowed as if I’d performed a wonderful trick.
Wik smiled too. “Good.” They blindfolded me again, but without the metal rod. “Now try to mimic the vibration the rod made: tilt your head back slightly, open your mouth — yes, just like that — and click your tongue against the roof of your mouth very quickly.”
That sounded ridiculous. I lifted the edge of my blindfold with a finger and looked at them. They were surely making fun of me.
“Just do it!” Wik was growing exasperated. He wanted discipline, not questions.
Blindfold dropped, the dark complete, I tried to do what he asked. My mouth gaped open, and I pressed the tip of my tongue against my mouth to make a clicking sound, as I’d heard Sellis do sometimes in flight.
“Faster!” Ciel whispered.
I heard the clicks in my head, but still they meant nothing.
Until their shape changed. Instead of sound leaving me, some of it returned, faintly, as if the noises I made had bounced off something. Echoing. I tried to lift the blindfold again. Wik stopped my hand. “No. Tell me what you heard.”
“The sound changed. Like Ciel was holding the chip up in front of me again.”
Wik took my hand from the silk blindfold and guided it away from me, until my fingers connected with the hard slab of the bone chip, an arm’s span from my face.
“You heard it there.”
“So?” I couldn’t see how this was important.
Wik sighed at my tone. Even blindfolded, I could guess the face he made. Frustrated. Full of frowns.
“So. Try it again.”
I heard robes swish, then silence. Something had changed, and they wanted me to guess it by making that ridiculous face while clicking my tongue. Fine. Though I could not imagine the dignified Singers doing something like this, I tilted my head back and clicked again, faster this time.
I strained to hear the echoes. “The chip is farther away?”
“How do you know?”
“The echoes are fainter?”
“Echoes? Plural? Listen to what your body is telling you.”
And I got it. “Plural echoes. Two objects, farther away.”
“Reach out.”
I swept my arm in a half circle. Stretched my fingers as far as they would go. Touched nothing. I attempted again to lift the blindfold, but Wik stopped me once more.
“Walk forward two steps, then reach out again.”
When I did, my sweeping hand brushed one bone chip to my left, then Moc or Ciel’s small fingers, then air, then a silk panel held taut by more small fingers.
“That’s very useful, Wik. I can find small children holding objects in an empty room with my eyes closed.” I felt ridiculous. Like they were setting me up for a prank.
I heard the smile in his voice. “You learned that very fast, Kirit. Good. You will need to learn much more, even faster.”
I waited.
“This is your room now, Kirit. No more sleeping outside Sellis’s alcove.”
I sighed with relief. That was a very good change.
“But,” Wik added, “you will live here blindfolded. If you remove the blindfold, you will fail the training.” His voice didn’t waver. He was serious.
Fail. How much? I wondered. Could I fail just this portion of being a Singer, like with the wingtest? Or would I fail the whole thing? I resolved to not fail any of it.
He continued, “When you are ready, you may meet us in the dining alcove for something to eat. But you may not remove the blindfold.”
That didn’t sound like such a bad task. When I said so, I heard Ciel laugh. Something grated, bone on bone. A lid, being rolled away from the floor. Ciel took my hand and walked me forward five steps. I heard the sucking sound of a windbeaters’ tunnel, low, near the floor.
My new alcove was seemingly part of the vent system. If I made a mistake and got too close to it, I could be sucked out of the Spire. Worse, whenever I left the alcove, I would know the Gyre’s edge was nearby.
“You wouldn’t risk me falling. You need me.” My voice was almost pleading.
“We need someone who can fly as we do, not someone who stands on ledges and shouts at the sky.” Wik’s voice was firm. He meant every word.
They bound the blindfold and covered it with another layer of silk. If I broke the second layer, it would be obvious for all to see.
“I don’t know how to do this.” All I’d been shown was some sort of mouth trick, a stunt with echoes.
“Use your ears, Kirit. Use the feeling in your bones,” Wik said from farther away. He pressed the metal rod into my hands. “Few animals fly at night. You must become a bat.”